◄►Bookmark◄❌►▲▼Toggle AllToC▲▼Add to LibraryRemove from Library • BShow CommentNext New CommentNext New Reply

Search TextCase SensitiveExact WordsInclude Comments

List of Bookmarks

In my Taki’s column this week, “Political Punk Rock,” I pointed out that the alt-right movement so frequently denounced by Hillary and all else who represent everything that is appropriate in American life, bears an awfully lot of stylistic similarities to the punk rock movement of four decades ago: “loud, abrasive, hostile, white, back to basics, and fun.”

But there’s an even more direct connection to rock music history: the “alt-right” label is almost certainly a reference in part to the “alt-rock” monicker.

As the 1970s terms “punk” got too stylistically confining and “new wave” ran into its sell-by date, the phrase “alternative rock” emerged during the 1980s to describe rock with roots in the punk/new wave philosophy. “Alternative rock” was positioned as offering an alternative to mainstream rock stars such as, say, Bon Jovi, who was kind of a Bruce Springsteen with a much larger budget for hair care products.

Alt-rock tended to appeal most to youngish white male fans with 3 digit IQs. 1980s alt-rock relied heavily on traditional electric guitars played pretty fast and loud. Fans of alternative rock tended to see it as cooler than its competitors, even if (or because) it was not as immediately appealing and could be off-putting compared to more polished MTV-ready mainstream styles. It was also an implicit white male identity movement by putting an extreme stress on the kinds of things that white suburban youths thought cooler than anybody else in their right minds did.

Alt-rock suddenly broke through to commercial success in 1991 with Nirvana’s Nevermind album (the title is a reference to the Sex Pistols’ 1977 punk album Never Mind the Bollocks) featuring “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”

After that, “alt” and “indie” vied to be umbrella terms for the intelligent opposition to the musical mainstream. When driving around Los Angeles these days, I often listen to the radio station Alt 98.7. Before it went off the air, I listened to the late Indie 103.1, which featured the amiable Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones as their star DJ.

Don’t ask me exactly what the difference between alt and indie is. I’m sure somebody knows, but not me.

A representative alt-rock classic played on both stations endlessly over the decades has been the 1994 Offspring song “Self Esteem,” which works as a sort of self-lacerating Men’s Rights / PUA how-not-to-do-it anti-anthem.

Offspring frontman/songwriter Dexter Holland had been a molecular biology doctoral candidate at USC. (In his 40s he went back to his doctoral program, rather like one of the Alvin brothers of L.A.’s The Blasters is now a comp sci professor.)

I’ve always assumed that the phrase “alternative right” includes a reference to “alternative rock.” After all, Richard Spencer was about 13 when Nirvana’s alternative rock electrified the airwaves in 1991.

Commenter guest adds:

You’re right, Steve, it was an umbrella term. I don’t know whether it was mere marketing, but any name that covers Rob Zombie, Blues Traveller, and Lisa Loeb simultaneously must be a sham. We know that something was the core of alt-rock. Was it REM? Nirvana? I don’t know. But the name is an impediment to finding out, because all it really means is outside the mainstream.

There has been definitional confusion concerning the alt-right, among members and those who just heard the term yesterday alike. It ought by right to refer to either to anything outside the rightist mainstream or outside the mainstream on the right. (That is, outside the normie mainstream, which is the Overton Window, or outside of Conservatism, Inc. on the right. Which might sound like the same thing, but technically isn’t.) But I detect a more precise definition flying under the broad name. I don’t know what to call it, exactly. The populist right? The nationalist right? Anyway, it is eating up the name “alt-right,” which is confusing.

What do you call right-libertarians, for instance? Or neoreactionaries? Or paleo-conservatives who don’t exactly fit the prevailing definition? The alt-alt-right? That’s confusing.

One possible use for the term “Alternative” in politics is to use it to refer to a new orthogonal ideological polarization. For several decades, the central pole has been “left vs. right” organized around questions like how high should the capital gains tax be? But that seems to have run into diminishing marginal returns in recent years.

One alternative reorganization of politics would be to to make the poles Globalism versus Localism. Trump’s old-fashioned Eisenhower-Stevenson-style American nationalism thus would make him “alt-center.”

I actually hadn’t gotten to that part in Michael Stutz’s article (or I would have linked to it) at Charles C. Johnson’s GotNews website, but clearly Mr. Stutz anticipated my main idea and deserves credit for it.

I guess the term includes everything that played on MTV's 120 Minutes: The Smiths, Psychedelic Furs, Mudhoney, Nirvana, Alice in Chains, etc. The most defining feature of the music was you had to seek it out and it was as good or better in many cases than what played on the regular Top 40 Stations. Even now on Cable's Music Choice "Adult Alternative" channel there is a lot of excellent new music of the "College Rock" variety including everything from the Avett Brothers to Houndmouth that is not so easy to find, but a lot of it enjoyable and evincing great talent. Almost all white, incidentally, although some interesting black artists too.

ReplyAgree/Disagree/Etc.

AgreeDisagreeLOLTroll

These buttons register your public Agreement, Disagreement, Troll, or LOL with the selected comment. They are ONLY available to recent, frequent commenters who have saved their Name+Email using the 'Remember My Information' checkbox, and may also ONLY be used once per hour.

The difference is that alt-rock became the mainstream rock of the 90s following Nirvana’s success.

Alt-rock existed in the 80s with bands like Dinosaur Jr. and the Meat Puppets, but it wasn’t very mainstream. It was sort of the indie and underground rock of the 80s. Bon Jovi style hard glam rock was the mainstream then.

After alt-rock became mainstream rock in the 90s, indie rock became a sort of catchall for all non mainstream, non alt-rock bands that played variations of older pre alt-rock styles. Then indie rock itself became mainstream in the 2000s with bands like the Strokes.

In New York, the commercial rock radio stations played hardly any alt-rock in the '80s. They played mostly bands that had been big in the '70s. When Nevermind came out, grunge was so big that they were playing it on pop stations for a while. But the local classic rock station wouldn't play Nirvana. Today it does though.

Dinosaur Jr was the beginning of the end where I was. That was the Nerds Take Over moment, when all the really cool punk/underground stuff seemed to end and the Sonic Youth inspired thumbsuckers came in. I dug SY, but DJ and the rest were a real drag.

Funny thing, the Bon Jovi type acts can be traced back to glam rock, of course, but also hard rock/heavy metal acts from the 70s, like Van Halen and Aerosmith. Bands which fulfilled a lot of the cliches of punk and grunge, like do-it-yourself, building followings outside the promotion superstructure, playing live on the recordings with minimal tricks, being (selectively) offensive, loud and brash musically, and so on. But no one confuses them for the alternative scene, even when they're not doing what happens to be popular. (Van Halen hit when disco was king.)

Janes Addiction was another band alt-rock band which had a big following in the 80s but really took off in the 90s. Perry Farrel then started the Lollapalooza festival as a farewell tour for his band in 1991. It was at Lollapalooza where Farrell coined the term "Alternative Nation" to describe the festival

These were all created in the Great Renaming of 1986–1987, before which all of these newsgroups were in the net.* hierarchy. At that time there was a great controversy over what newsgroups should be allowed. Among those that the Usenet cabal (who effectively ran the Big 7 at the time) did not allow were those concerning recipes, recreational drug use, and sex.

This situation resulted in the creation of an alt.* (short for “alternative”) Usenet hierarchy, under which these groups would be allowed. Over time, the laxness of rules on newsgroup creation in alt.* compared to the Big 7 meant that many new topics could, given time, gain enough popularity to get a Big 7 newsgroup. There was a rapid growth of alt.* as a result, and the trend continues to this day. Because of the anarchistic nature with which the groups sprang up, some jokingly referred to ALT standing for “Anarchists, Lunatics and Terrorists” (a backronym).

Absolutely. Alt was the soul of usenet. Who can forget alt.swedish.chef.bork.bork.bork. or
alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.

and alt.seduction.fast. I ignored alt.seduction.fast because the idea that something I read on the internet could get me into the pants of women was too incredible for me to accept. You had to play sports and be a star at minimum, or TALL. It must have been a fraud.

But, I gather in alt.seduction.fast "players" posted their experiences on dates trying to get into women's pants (just as in comp. science.unix.solaris people posted their experiences trying to get sendmail to complile on solaris) out of simple good will to their fellow man and these tentitive reports blossemed.

Someone posted "I flattered her to death and she said she had to work tomorrow and went home." Another person posted I treated her bad and she hung on my shoulder. And game was born. Empirically. It was all field reports. I did x she did y. Eventually some people started to notice patterns. Early game texts were alt.seduction.fast reports digested into a different form. Scientific method applied to getting laid.

I dunno, ER, "alternative" in music predated its application in usenet, and exceeded it in visibility. Influential zines like "Alternative Ulster" (1977) and "Alternative Press" (1985) and the MTV alternative show (1986) brought the term to a wide audience before the alt hierarchy even existed. Usenet was confined to a small geeky fringe until well into the 90s.

I think Steve's right, alt-right shares DNA with alt-rock. The alt-right is an R&D lab for social thought the same as alt-rock was an R&D lab for musical ideas that later reached broader acceptance. Alt-right blogs and websites mirror the networked structure and oppositional, DIY spirit of alt-rock zines and labels.

Yeah, they never got no respect, even in their prime. But DEAD OR ALIVE and BLAZE OF GLORY were totally righteous songs.

And you know what? This illustrates a little-noted ethnological divide in rock. BON JOVI was a straight-outta-Jooyzee, goomba-Italian rock-n-roll band that was fun, gregarious, and a huge hit with the ladies because they paid attention to their hair and clothing- just as Italian men are among the world's most stylish. Same for AEROSMITH (a New England Italian/Portuguese band). In contrast, rock groups that are of mostly dreary Northern European forest stock do not pay nearly as much attention to looks and embrace musical styles that are often harsh and lyrical themes that are decidedly unromantic- in other words, they are chick repellents and play to mostly sausage fests (THIS IS SPINAL TAP made the same observation early on). And it is an immutable law that a rock star that cannot attract good-looking women will not remain a star for long (one of grunge's most deleterious effects- with its utilitarian, lumberjack dresscode- was to take all fashion sense out of white rock music. THE BLACK KEYS- who I'm told are a talented group- like like grown-up AV club rejects).

The Offspring members include some high IQ guys. The singer is a molecular biology grad student, IIRC, and I think there was a guy in the band with masters in finance.

My favorite alt-rock band for years was The Cult. I first heard their Sonic Temple album on a buddy’s smuggled Walkman in Fort Benning in 1989, and over the years I saw them in concert several times, mostly in NYC, but I also saw them once in Brazil. Funny you mentioned Bon Jovi, because in that concert, the lead singer, Ian Astbury, mentioned him contemptuously.

This year, at a concert in Canada, Black Lives Matter came up, apparently, and Ian Astbury said “all lives matter”. Then he got crap for it, and apologized and said black lives matter. I tweeted the band a link to one of your posts and they blocked me.

I wouldn’t call it an intelligent opposition, because most of it was as empty and vapid as any random pop music. But its audience and practitioners were probably smarter than average. Smart people enjoy stupid things, too.

I was 9 or 10 when Nirvana hit, and it was jarring. But everything NEW is supposed to be, in pop culture. At the time I didn’t think of them as any different from the other pop stars of the day. Kurt Cobain was just a dirtier Michael Jackson or Whitney Houston. Not that I couldn’t make fine distinctions, but I didn’t stick them in a different category.

Looking back, I can clearly see the differences. They are legion. But I’ll highlight two of them: simplicity and sourness. Regarding simplicity, they weren’t Brian Wilsons. They didn’t have high production values, and weren’t bringing in oboes and theramins, or whatever. There were recording tricks, of course. Nirvana’s unplugged performance, for instance, was masterly from a dramatic perspective, but musically it was horse poop. Because Kurt could barely sing or play guitar. They had to make himself m sound better on the albums, or else no one would listen.

However, though they were prepared and smoothed over for mass consumption, they weren’t as prepackaged and marketed as mainstream acts. Which made alr-rock at least feel more real, more authentic, whatever that means. The alt-right also prides itself on being the last honest man in an Orwellian world. Alt-rock had the Do-It-Yourself mantra, shared with punk rock, which the alt-right follows. No leaders, self-motivated meme warfare, and so on.

Alt-rock music was also simple musically. It was very monotonous to my ears, which brings us to the other highlight: sourness. I can’t think of a better term for the overall feeling the music gives me. It’s sour. The harmony is off. The melodies are boring. The instruments are fuzzy. I suspect they were deliberately trying to be unpleasant. Often in the openly offensive manner of punk rock, but moreso in the laid-back sense that they just don’t care whether you like them or not.

The difference is that alt-rock became the mainstream rock of the 90s following Nirvana's success.

Alt-rock existed in the 80s with bands like Dinosaur Jr. and the Meat Puppets, but it wasn't very mainstream. It was sort of the indie and underground rock of the 80s. Bon Jovi style hard glam rock was the mainstream then.

After alt-rock became mainstream rock in the 90s, indie rock became a sort of catchall for all non mainstream, non alt-rock bands that played variations of older pre alt-rock styles. Then indie rock itself became mainstream in the 2000s with bands like the Strokes.

In New York, the commercial rock radio stations played hardly any alt-rock in the ’80s. They played mostly bands that had been big in the ’70s. When Nevermind came out, grunge was so big that they were playing it on pop stations for a while. But the local classic rock station wouldn’t play Nirvana. Today it does though.

Interestingly, despite the similarities of their career paths, the two bands actually achieved this while going in completely opposite musical directions. The Cure pretty much started out with, or at least quickly arrived at, the darkest sound they would ever cultivate, becoming synonymous with goth rock to the general public, while Depeche Mode started out as a gay synth-pop band—and I mean literally gay, they actually sang songs about coming on to dudes.

You’re right, Steve, it was an umbrella term. I don’t know whether it was mere marketing, but any name that covers Rob Zombie, Blues Traveller, and Lisa Loeb simultaneously must be a sham. We know that something was the core of alt-rock. Was it REM? Nirvana? I don’t know. But the name is an impediment to finding out, because all it really means is outside the mainstream.

There has been definitional confusion concerning the alt-right, among members and those who just heard the term yesterday alike. It ought by right to refer to either to anything outside the rightist mainstream or outside the mainstream on the right. (That is, outside the normie mainstream, which is the Overton Window, or outside of Conservatism, Inc. on the right. Which might sound like the same thing, but technically isn’t.) But I detect a more precise definition flying under the broad name. I don’t know what to call it, exactly. The populist right? The nationalist right? Anyway, it is eating up the name “alt-right,” which is confusing.

What do you call right-libertarians, for instance? Or neoreactionaries? Or paleo-conservatives who don’t exactly fit the prevailing definition? The alt-alt-right? That’s confusing.

Sometimes, to give myself temporal whiplash, I reflect on the fact that there are almost twice as many years between the release of Nevermind and today (2016 – 1991 = 25 years) as there are years between the release of Never Mind the Bollocks and Nevermind (1991 – 1977 = 14 years).

The difference is that alt-rock became the mainstream rock of the 90s following Nirvana's success.

Alt-rock existed in the 80s with bands like Dinosaur Jr. and the Meat Puppets, but it wasn't very mainstream. It was sort of the indie and underground rock of the 80s. Bon Jovi style hard glam rock was the mainstream then.

After alt-rock became mainstream rock in the 90s, indie rock became a sort of catchall for all non mainstream, non alt-rock bands that played variations of older pre alt-rock styles. Then indie rock itself became mainstream in the 2000s with bands like the Strokes.

Dinosaur Jr was the beginning of the end where I was. That was the Nerds Take Over moment, when all the really cool punk/underground stuff seemed to end and the Sonic Youth inspired thumbsuckers came in. I dug SY, but DJ and the rest were a real drag.

Alternative this or that. In the 80′s and 90′s we talked about an alternative lifestyle. That meant homosexuality. I listened to what radio DJ’s called alternative rock, but it went ugly in about 1991 and I left popular music, never to return.
I suppose we all like the music we hear from about age 14 to 20 the best. Does that sound about right?
The stuff my nephews and nieces listen to now is utterly boring to me. Lots of percussion and singing, but not much music. Are more instruments just too much expense, I wonder?

"I suppose we all like the music we hear from about the age 14 to 20 the best. Does that sound about right?"

Rock music, maybe. I like the pop music from earlier, maybe 5 to 12. That's who it's made for, I presume. Some of that includes hard rock. My earliest memories of pop culture are from 1987, when I was 5. Madonna's Like a Prayer and G'n'R's Paradise City stand out most to me. Make of that what you will.

I didn't like contemporary rock when I was a teenager. I wasn't into Green Day, Nine Inch Nails, Weezer, Live, Tool, or what have you. I jumped back to classic and early rock. But your theory holds up, so far as rock is concerned, because that's still my favorite of the genre.

But no, I don't like the music I liked from 14 to 20 the best. I discover new music all the time, and some of it fits my personality better now. Folk, country, jazz, and new age, for instance, are allowed to be more mature. But above all, I didn't get into classical music until I was an adult. And that is far, far more important to me now than any kind of popular music.

The difference is that alt-rock became the mainstream rock of the 90s following Nirvana's success.

Alt-rock existed in the 80s with bands like Dinosaur Jr. and the Meat Puppets, but it wasn't very mainstream. It was sort of the indie and underground rock of the 80s. Bon Jovi style hard glam rock was the mainstream then.

After alt-rock became mainstream rock in the 90s, indie rock became a sort of catchall for all non mainstream, non alt-rock bands that played variations of older pre alt-rock styles. Then indie rock itself became mainstream in the 2000s with bands like the Strokes.

Funny thing, the Bon Jovi type acts can be traced back to glam rock, of course, but also hard rock/heavy metal acts from the 70s, like Van Halen and Aerosmith. Bands which fulfilled a lot of the cliches of punk and grunge, like do-it-yourself, building followings outside the promotion superstructure, playing live on the recordings with minimal tricks, being (selectively) offensive, loud and brash musically, and so on. But no one confuses them for the alternative scene, even when they’re not doing what happens to be popular. (Van Halen hit when disco was king.)

Interestingly, despite the similarities of their career paths, the two bands actually achieved this while going in completely opposite musical directions. The Cure pretty much started out with, or at least quickly arrived at, the darkest sound they would ever cultivate, becoming synonymous with goth rock to the general public, while Depeche Mode started out as a gay synth-pop band—and I mean literally gay, they actually sang songs about coming on to dudes.

I respect the early evolution of Depeche Mode much more than, say, Ministry. Depeche Mode stopped being gay because they started as a supergroup of Depeche Mode and Erasure. At their peak, Depeche Mode was heavily influenced by Flood and Alan Wilder.

Steve, that works on a number of levels. The alt-rock guys are now in their 30-50 age range, I would guess. That’s mostly Gen X, somewhat known for not really giving a crap about social conventions, but not really interested in rebellion either. Judging from twitter, my guess is a lot of the more laconic members of the alt-right are of that generation.

That generational thing continues to annoy me. I fit in that window. My parents were definitely Boomers, which I guess makes me technically a Gen Xer, tail-end Gen-X at best. But growing up I remember them calling us Generation Y. Then Generation Y disappeared, and they started in with the Millennial crap.

I graduated in 2000, so I was barely an adult before the new millennium. I also barely remember not having the internet or cell phones. Does that make me a Millennial? But I also remember Nirvana happening. That doesn't fit. Who cares?

You see how arbitrary are the distinctions. People seem to forget babies are born constantly

I think you’re right about the similarities between the current alt-right and alt-rock’s fan base back in its prime years. Even so, my mobile phone seems to think the alt-right is part of the Velvet Underground era. Whenever I rip the audio off an alt-right YouTube video and load it on my phone, it assigns it a Velvet Underground album cover as its thumbnail. So when I hear Richard Spencer talking to Millennial Woes, I see Lou Reed sitting on a sofa.

Mark Oliver Everett is the son of physicist Hugh Everett III, originator of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum theory and of the use of Lagrange multipliers for general engineering optimizations.

In New York, the commercial rock radio stations played hardly any alt-rock in the '80s. They played mostly bands that had been big in the '70s. When Nevermind came out, grunge was so big that they were playing it on pop stations for a while. But the local classic rock station wouldn't play Nirvana. Today it does though.

Yeah alt-rock in the 80s was only on like college stations.

In the 90s, alt-rock wasn’t just the mainstream rock, but it was so popular that it made up a lot of the pop music at the time.

You're right, Steve, it was an umbrella term. I don't know whether it was mere marketing, but any name that covers Rob Zombie, Blues Traveller, and Lisa Loeb simultaneously must be a sham. We know that something was the core of alt-rock. Was it REM? Nirvana? I don't know. But the name is an impediment to finding out, because all it really means is outside the mainstream.

There has been definitional confusion concerning the alt-right, among members and those who just heard the term yesterday alike. It ought by right to refer to either to anything outside the rightist mainstream or outside the mainstream on the right. (That is, outside the normie mainstream, which is the Overton Window, or outside of Conservatism, Inc. on the right. Which might sound like the same thing, but technically isn't.) But I detect a more precise definition flying under the broad name. I don't know what to call it, exactly. The populist right? The nationalist right? Anyway, it is eating up the name "alt-right," which is confusing.

What do you call right-libertarians, for instance? Or neoreactionaries? Or paleo-conservatives who don't exactly fit the prevailing definition? The alt-alt-right? That's confusing.

The “core” of Alt Rock was Grunge, I think, the Seattle bands like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden. The closer you were to that sound, the closer you were to “Alternative.”

That's probably true. Personally, though, I detach Soundgarden from the other two, I think because they fit better with my taste for classic hard rock and heavy metal. I'm not sure if that's true or I'm being arbitrary, because they can be as sour, fuzzy, and punkish as the rest (see: Ty Cobb). But I like them a lot, lot better.

Could be I just prefer Chris Cornell's voice. Kurt can't sing, and Eddie Vedder was once the most annoying person on the planet to me.

Given the outrageous range of opinions characterizing the New Right (“alt right” sounds stupid to me), the comparison to a music “genre” that claims everything from Neutral Milk Hotel to Low to Sonic Youth to Red House Painters to Godspeed You Black Emporer is pretty apt.

I got the best show of Costello's south-central swing: 40 minutes of the songs from "My Aim Is True," then Nick Lowe playing 3 songs, then an intermission, then 40 minutes of "This Year's Model," with "Pump It Up" as the one encore.

Followed by 15 minutes of pounding beer mugs on the stage demanding more. About the only way to top that show would have been if they come back out for a second encore, this time of "What's So Funny About Peace Love and Understanding?"

Alternative this or that. In the 80's and 90's we talked about an alternative lifestyle. That meant homosexuality. I listened to what radio DJ's called alternative rock, but it went ugly in about 1991 and I left popular music, never to return.
I suppose we all like the music we hear from about age 14 to 20 the best. Does that sound about right?
The stuff my nephews and nieces listen to now is utterly boring to me. Lots of percussion and singing, but not much music. Are more instruments just too much expense, I wonder?

“I suppose we all like the music we hear from about the age 14 to 20 the best. Does that sound about right?”

Rock music, maybe. I like the pop music from earlier, maybe 5 to 12. That’s who it’s made for, I presume. Some of that includes hard rock. My earliest memories of pop culture are from 1987, when I was 5. Madonna’s Like a Prayer and G’n’R’s Paradise City stand out most to me. Make of that what you will.

I didn’t like contemporary rock when I was a teenager. I wasn’t into Green Day, Nine Inch Nails, Weezer, Live, Tool, or what have you. I jumped back to classic and early rock. But your theory holds up, so far as rock is concerned, because that’s still my favorite of the genre.

But no, I don’t like the music I liked from 14 to 20 the best. I discover new music all the time, and some of it fits my personality better now. Folk, country, jazz, and new age, for instance, are allowed to be more mature. But above all, I didn’t get into classical music until I was an adult. And that is far, far more important to me now than any kind of popular music.

These were all created in the Great Renaming of 1986–1987, before which all of these newsgroups were in the net.* hierarchy. At that time there was a great controversy over what newsgroups should be allowed. Among those that the Usenet cabal (who effectively ran the Big 7 at the time) did not allow were those concerning recipes, recreational drug use, and sex.

This situation resulted in the creation of an alt.* (short for "alternative") Usenet hierarchy, under which these groups would be allowed. Over time, the laxness of rules on newsgroup creation in alt.* compared to the Big 7 meant that many new topics could, given time, gain enough popularity to get a Big 7 newsgroup. There was a rapid growth of alt.* as a result, and the trend continues to this day. Because of the anarchistic nature with which the groups sprang up, some jokingly referred to ALT standing for "Anarchists, Lunatics and Terrorists" (a backronym).

Absolutely. Alt was the soul of usenet. Who can forget alt.swedish.chef.bork.bork.bork. or
alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.

and alt.seduction.fast. I ignored alt.seduction.fast because the idea that something I read on the internet could get me into the pants of women was too incredible for me to accept. You had to play sports and be a star at minimum, or TALL. It must have been a fraud.

But, I gather in alt.seduction.fast “players” posted their experiences on dates trying to get into women’s pants (just as in comp. science.unix.solaris people posted their experiences trying to get sendmail to complile on solaris) out of simple good will to their fellow man and these tentitive reports blossemed.

Someone posted “I flattered her to death and she said she had to work tomorrow and went home.” Another person posted I treated her bad and she hung on my shoulder. And game was born. Empirically. It was all field reports. I did x she did y. Eventually some people started to notice patterns. Early game texts were alt.seduction.fast reports digested into a different form. Scientific method applied to getting laid.

The 90s also saw the rebirth of Johnny Cash with massive popularity among young kids after getting together with producer Rick rubin – what political analogy would that fit? Is that like Ron Paul in 2012? Any other guesses?

I wouldn't call it massive popularity, but it certainly upped his hipster quotient. I remember "Ring of Fire" having a resurgence in my teens. It was featured in the feel-bad movie "Feeling Minnesota," one of the many crappy movies filmed in my home state in my youth.

He didn't hit the massive mark until he redid Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt," which must've been in the early 00s.

Won tickets to see the Damned from Jonesie’s Jukebox by identifying the three saint’s crosses which make up the UK flag back in 04. Good show, Wayne Kramer jumped on stage and Captain Sensible said he could die happy after having played with Wayne Kramer of the MC5.

The "core" of Alt Rock was Grunge, I think, the Seattle bands like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden. The closer you were to that sound, the closer you were to "Alternative."

That’s probably true. Personally, though, I detach Soundgarden from the other two, I think because they fit better with my taste for classic hard rock and heavy metal. I’m not sure if that’s true or I’m being arbitrary, because they can be as sour, fuzzy, and punkish as the rest (see: Ty Cobb). But I like them a lot, lot better.

Could be I just prefer Chris Cornell’s voice. Kurt can’t sing, and Eddie Vedder was once the most annoying person on the planet to me.

That’s probably true. Personally, though, I detach Soundgarden from the other two, I think because they fit better with my taste for classic hard rock and heavy metal. I’m not sure if that’s true or I’m being arbitrary, because they can be as sour, fuzzy, and punkish as the rest (see: Ty Cobb). But I like them a lot, lot better.

Could be I just prefer Chris Cornell’s voice. Kurt can’t sing, and Eddie Vedder was once the most annoying person on the planet to me.

Pearl Jam came out of Mother Love Bone after lead singer Andrew Wood ODed on smack back around 1990. MLB was more glam than grunge. I liked the band -- Crown of Thorns is pretty good. But can't say I'm a big fan of Vedder. He had a little too much self-importance for the genre.

I met Stone Gossard not all that long ago at my kids' preschool. He was sitting next to me at the parents' orientation and I thought he was a carpenter or something like that until he introduced himself.

Best concert I ever went to was Bumbershoot 1990 with Soundgarden at the Seattle Center Coliseum. Jesus I can hardly believe it was so long ago. That Seattle is long gone. It died right around the same time Kurt Cobain blew his head off.

Alice in Chains is basically metal in the musical sense. They were touring with Metallica. But because they came out of Seattle the same time, they were called grunge, which is musically not a very meaningful term.

"I suppose we all like the music we hear from about the age 14 to 20 the best. Does that sound about right?"

Rock music, maybe. I like the pop music from earlier, maybe 5 to 12. That's who it's made for, I presume. Some of that includes hard rock. My earliest memories of pop culture are from 1987, when I was 5. Madonna's Like a Prayer and G'n'R's Paradise City stand out most to me. Make of that what you will.

I didn't like contemporary rock when I was a teenager. I wasn't into Green Day, Nine Inch Nails, Weezer, Live, Tool, or what have you. I jumped back to classic and early rock. But your theory holds up, so far as rock is concerned, because that's still my favorite of the genre.

But no, I don't like the music I liked from 14 to 20 the best. I discover new music all the time, and some of it fits my personality better now. Folk, country, jazz, and new age, for instance, are allowed to be more mature. But above all, I didn't get into classical music until I was an adult. And that is far, far more important to me now than any kind of popular music.

Finding the non-white in the Tool audience is like finding Waldo. Something about non-danceable music and obscure time signatures, along with music complex enough to require multiple listens to properly enjoy is a very white guy thing. Maynard OTOH has compared Trump to Hitler.

If Trump is going to be anyone from Germany in the 1930s it's Hindenburg. It's possible a WN might follow Trump, not an anti-Semite though. But Trump can really only provoke some demographic stasis and better thought out domestic and foreign policy.

1. I like the Offspring a lot, even though their B-tracks all sound the same. Their best songs: Come Out and Play, Self Esteem, Why Don’t You Get a Job, and Pretty Fly for a White Guy.

2. I was going to a school in a poor white area when Nevermind came out, I can assure you that it was quite popular among low-IQ white guys too.

3. At the same school, in the first few weeks of class, I’d guess I was about 13, a big dumb guy who had been held back punched me in the eye for saying Beck only had one good song. Happy ending: we became friends later in the year when we were assigned to a “service detention” of cleaning the school together after hours.

4. After 1985 or so, was there even any mainstream rock left? There was hair metal and geezer rock, but by the time Nirvana came around the white guys who were not listening to grunge were into rap, pop-punk, or heavy metal (or perhaps electronic music, but not in small towns in the midwest).

Camille Paglia may issue a statement in favour of the alt-right some time in the future. I have no reason to predict that, except it would make perfect sense if she did. She will celebrate their unabashed Trumpismo, make reference to Bryan Ferry, Minoan bull jumping, Bertolucci’s The Conformist, Morrissey and maybe the original Rollerball.

Huh. That's the first time I've heard that Bowie song. I've never sat down and listened to his album "Low" (despite it being an influence on the sound of Elvis Costello and the Attractions album "Armed Forces").

I've done a search and found a site that claims the Lowe song is a parody of the Bowie song:

http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=27488

This is a parody of David Bowie's song, "Breaking Glass." Lowe had previously poked fun at Bowie in 1977, when he released an EP titled Bowi, in humorous response to Bowie releasing an album titled Low, which lacked the final 'e' of Lowe's surname.

1. I like the Offspring a lot, even though their B-tracks all sound the same. Their best songs: Come Out and Play, Self Esteem, Why Don't You Get a Job, and Pretty Fly for a White Guy.

2. I was going to a school in a poor white area when Nevermind came out, I can assure you that it was quite popular among low-IQ white guys too.

3. At the same school, in the first few weeks of class, I'd guess I was about 13, a big dumb guy who had been held back punched me in the eye for saying Beck only had one good song. Happy ending: we became friends later in the year when we were assigned to a "service detention" of cleaning the school together after hours.

4. After 1985 or so, was there even any mainstream rock left? There was hair metal and geezer rock, but by the time Nirvana came around the white guys who were not listening to grunge were into rap, pop-punk, or heavy metal (or perhaps electronic music, but not in small towns in the midwest).

There’s some MRA/PUA in Self Esteem and Why Don’t You Get a Job, if only in a what-not-to-do fashion, as people have said.

Steve, that works on a number of levels. The alt-rock guys are now in their 30-50 age range, I would guess. That's mostly Gen X, somewhat known for not really giving a crap about social conventions, but not really interested in rebellion either. Judging from twitter, my guess is a lot of the more laconic members of the alt-right are of that generation.

I liked the jazz reference in your Taki piece: http://tinyurl.com/zprlwd3

Guys like you and Derb are now studio men, the Wrecking Crew of this new thing.

That generational thing continues to annoy me. I fit in that window. My parents were definitely Boomers, which I guess makes me technically a Gen Xer, tail-end Gen-X at best. But growing up I remember them calling us Generation Y. Then Generation Y disappeared, and they started in with the Millennial crap.

I graduated in 2000, so I was barely an adult before the new millennium. I also barely remember not having the internet or cell phones. Does that make me a Millennial? But I also remember Nirvana happening. That doesn’t fit. Who cares?

You see how arbitrary are the distinctions. People seem to forget babies are born constantly

Like all generalizations, these labels are not intended to perfect. But, I agree with your point, particularly with regards to the Boomers. Sailer is technically a Boomer, but I doubt he can relate to the people who were getting stoned during the summer of love. He was too young. Throwing him in the same bucket as a broken down old woman like Hillary Clinton does not make much sense.

I heard a 36 year old woman describe herself as a millennial the other day, so I'm confused as to what age range it includes. Ivanka Trump describes herself as a millennial. I also hear 18 year olds described as millennials. That is too big an age range for one generation.

By the way, having Boomer parents doesn't make you automatically Generation X. My parents are Boomers and I'm too young to have ever been included in Gen X.

But you are right- what happened to Generation Y? I think it was supposed to include 1979 to 1994.

01. Radio, Radio
02. Waiting For The End Of The World
03. No Action
04. Stranger In The House
05. Blame It On Cain
06. The Beat
07. You Belong To Me
08. Less Than Zero (Dallas Version)
09. Lipstick Vogue
10. Watching The Detectives
11. Pump It Up
Encore 1
12. Nutted By Reality - Nick Lowe vocal, Martin Belmont on guitar
13. I Love The Sound Of Breaking Glass - Nick Lowe vocal, Martin Belmont on guitar
14. Shake And Pop - Nick Lowe vocal, Martin Belmont on guitar
15. Heart Of The City - Nick Lowe vocal, Martin Belmont on guitar
Encore 2
16. Mystery Dance

Any of that ring a bell?

I got the best show of Costello’s south-central swing: 40 minutes of the songs from “My Aim Is True,” then Nick Lowe playing 3 songs, then an intermission, then 40 minutes of “This Year’s Model,” with “Pump It Up” as the one encore.

Followed by 15 minutes of pounding beer mugs on the stage demanding more. About the only way to top that show would have been if they come back out for a second encore, this time of “What’s So Funny About Peace Love and Understanding?”

While metal was jumping the shark with hair bands and GNR, alternative music (basically Grunge) came along and drank their milkshake. As a metaphor for the alt-right, while on the one hand I like the rebellion and the fact alternative supplanted the dominant white musical culture, on the other hand, I don’t like the transience of alternative. It came, it went. It seemed like for quite a while we had bands that sounded like variations on Creed. And then I stopped listening to radio, aside from classical.

But then again, what do young white males listen to these days? I really don’t know. I think metal is actually quite common. Power metal seems enduring. For example, Sabaton, a Scando metal band with a niche of singing about famous European battles. Someone used their song Carollus Rex to stick a Trump montage to.

Now that everyone can basically research things on their own on the internet and can find the music themselves, the marketing push is less dominant. Now it’s more pull – people find what they like and get more of it.

I'd dispute that alternative was grunge. Grunge was alternative once alternative ceased to be alternative and became the commercial first choice.

Alternative was a thing in the 80's, pre-grunge, with college radio darlings like REM. (OK, REM was kind of the Eagles of alternative.) MTV did the "120 Minutes" show starting sometime in the mid-80's during a graveyard time slot, so it was big enough by then to get MTV to devote some airplay to it.

I think there's near-perfect definitional overlap with 80's college radio and alternative during that era, if only because alternative was defined in negative terms: it was what didn't fit into existing formats. Commercial radio airplay was dominated by what was by then being called classic rock, songs from the 60's and 70's that had been on constant rotation for the last 15 years. Hair metal was a genre, at least if you were in a large enough city for a metal station, and regular pop was a genre, but the Husker Du or Game Theory didn't figure there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyKU29v-JLg

I'd also include post-punk, hardcore, reggae, goth, neo-mod, and dream pop under the alternative banner. Obviously there is no unifying style at all to these, aside from the fact that they weren't getting airplay and triple digit IQ males were listening to them because they were fed up with everything else. Alternative acts would sometimes break through on the pop side (see REM, the Smiths, 10K Maniacs, etc) and for that reason the record labels and acts trying to break out paid a lot of attention to college radio.

Eventually college radio formed a sort of critical mass of a listening audience as novelty-seeking teens adopted the ethos. In the larger cities there were a few commercial stations (KROQ, 91X) that had playlists from the more popular college radio acts. Then Nirvana broke through and dragged a lot of bands with them. What had once been defined in negatively--"we're not Starship"--started solidifying around a style and attitude and maybe fashion sense in the 90's. What was called alternative in that era was actually the commercial mainstream.

I'd say were still in the 80's college radio phase of the alt-right. It's still defined in negative terms as not-something. It's all over the map stylistically, from the white identity people to the neo-reactionary monarchists to PUAs and HBDers. (I'd dispute that HBD is inherently alt-right at all; it just gets lumped there because it's rejected everywhere else.) One important difference is that the political equivalent of the record labels aren't mining the college radio of the alt-right, looking for new bands. There's no "120 Minutes" show. They're trying to blackball all the new acts so they can devote more airtime to REO Speedwagon.

My favourite definition of that is “any music descended from Sweetheart of the Rodeo”…

Really you mean "late Byrds." Sweetheart of the Rodeo had the best name and cover art, but its two best songs (Pretty Boy Floyd and Blue Canadian Rockies) were inferior to those on the albums before and after.

1. I like the Offspring a lot, even though their B-tracks all sound the same. Their best songs: Come Out and Play, Self Esteem, Why Don't You Get a Job, and Pretty Fly for a White Guy.

2. I was going to a school in a poor white area when Nevermind came out, I can assure you that it was quite popular among low-IQ white guys too.

3. At the same school, in the first few weeks of class, I'd guess I was about 13, a big dumb guy who had been held back punched me in the eye for saying Beck only had one good song. Happy ending: we became friends later in the year when we were assigned to a "service detention" of cleaning the school together after hours.

4. After 1985 or so, was there even any mainstream rock left? There was hair metal and geezer rock, but by the time Nirvana came around the white guys who were not listening to grunge were into rap, pop-punk, or heavy metal (or perhaps electronic music, but not in small towns in the midwest).

You’d have to classify heavy metal as mainstream rock at that point. Even the heavier stuff. Metallica’s Black Album came out the sane year as Nevermind, and I am willing to bet outsold it.

You’d have to classify heavy metal as mainstream rock at that point. Even the heavier stuff. Metallica’s Black Album came out the sane year as Nevermind, and I am willing to bet outsold it.

But the Black Album was more or less Metallica's coming out party. They were pretty alternative* throughout the 80s. And Justice for All got a lot of play on MTV, but you rarely heard them on the radio. Maiden and Sabbath have retained remarkable fan bases without ever really being mainstream (pop culture Ozzy was never really about his music).

* - in a different sense than Alt-Rock, but they were still an alternative to the mainstream.

You’d have to classify heavy metal as mainstream rock at that point. Even the heavier stuff. Metallica’s Black Album came out the sane year as Nevermind, and I am willing to bet outsold it.

Hmmm, Metallica was certainly mainstream at that point, and that album featured four gigantic hits, but I think it is largely just them crossing over. Notwithstanding the Macarena, flamenco music wasn't mainstream either in the 90's.

I mean you did not see Slayer collaborating the the SF Symphony Orchestra.

SO funny you would write this, I was just thinking that the establisment’s reaction to alt-right has been like the cliche ‘fuddy duddy’ straight white man in the 1950s and early 60s “rock n roll’ films – shocked by ‘indecent’ behavior of the ‘hippies’ and ‘ruffians’

Something tells me what is shocking the establishment – honest talk about immigration, Muslims, criticism about black lives matter- which is really an establishment movement is going to seem VERY tame in a few years….

The 90s also saw the rebirth of Johnny Cash with massive popularity among young kids after getting together with producer Rick rubin - what political analogy would that fit? Is that like Ron Paul in 2012? Any other guesses?

I wouldn’t call it massive popularity, but it certainly upped his hipster quotient. I remember “Ring of Fire” having a resurgence in my teens. It was featured in the feel-bad movie “Feeling Minnesota,” one of the many crappy movies filmed in my home state in my youth.

He didn’t hit the massive mark until he redid Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt,” which must’ve been in the early 00s.

That's probably true. Personally, though, I detach Soundgarden from the other two, I think because they fit better with my taste for classic hard rock and heavy metal. I'm not sure if that's true or I'm being arbitrary, because they can be as sour, fuzzy, and punkish as the rest (see: Ty Cobb). But I like them a lot, lot better.

Could be I just prefer Chris Cornell's voice. Kurt can't sing, and Eddie Vedder was once the most annoying person on the planet to me.

That’s probably true. Personally, though, I detach Soundgarden from the other two, I think because they fit better with my taste for classic hard rock and heavy metal. I’m not sure if that’s true or I’m being arbitrary, because they can be as sour, fuzzy, and punkish as the rest (see: Ty Cobb). But I like them a lot, lot better.

Could be I just prefer Chris Cornell’s voice. Kurt can’t sing, and Eddie Vedder was once the most annoying person on the planet to me.

Pearl Jam came out of Mother Love Bone after lead singer Andrew Wood ODed on smack back around 1990. MLB was more glam than grunge. I liked the band — Crown of Thorns is pretty good. But can’t say I’m a big fan of Vedder. He had a little too much self-importance for the genre.

I met Stone Gossard not all that long ago at my kids’ preschool. He was sitting next to me at the parents’ orientation and I thought he was a carpenter or something like that until he introduced himself.

Best concert I ever went to was Bumbershoot 1990 with Soundgarden at the Seattle Center Coliseum. Jesus I can hardly believe it was so long ago. That Seattle is long gone. It died right around the same time Kurt Cobain blew his head off.

You'd have to classify heavy metal as mainstream rock at that point. Even the heavier stuff. Metallica's Black Album came out the sane year as Nevermind, and I am willing to bet outsold it.

You’d have to classify heavy metal as mainstream rock at that point. Even the heavier stuff. Metallica’s Black Album came out the sane year as Nevermind, and I am willing to bet outsold it.

But the Black Album was more or less Metallica’s coming out party. They were pretty alternative* throughout the 80s. And Justice for All got a lot of play on MTV, but you rarely heard them on the radio. Maiden and Sabbath have retained remarkable fan bases without ever really being mainstream (pop culture Ozzy was never really about his music).

* – in a different sense than Alt-Rock, but they were still an alternative to the mainstream.

Ah, "Americana". My favourite definition of that is "any music descended from Sweetheart of the Rodeo"...

My favourite definition of that is “any music descended from Sweetheart of the Rodeo”…

Really you mean “late Byrds.” Sweetheart of the Rodeo had the best name and cover art, but its two best songs (Pretty Boy Floyd and Blue Canadian Rockies) were inferior to those on the albums before and after.

I haven't taken a scientific survey or anything, but I can fairly confidently state you're in the minority on that one. Listen to what you like, like what you like, but SotR is simply more influential.

Really you mean “late Byrds.” Sweetheart of the Rodeo had the best name and cover art, but its two best songs (Pretty Boy Floyd and Blue Canadian Rockies) were inferior to those on the albums before and after.

These were all created in the Great Renaming of 1986–1987, before which all of these newsgroups were in the net.* hierarchy. At that time there was a great controversy over what newsgroups should be allowed. Among those that the Usenet cabal (who effectively ran the Big 7 at the time) did not allow were those concerning recipes, recreational drug use, and sex.

This situation resulted in the creation of an alt.* (short for "alternative") Usenet hierarchy, under which these groups would be allowed. Over time, the laxness of rules on newsgroup creation in alt.* compared to the Big 7 meant that many new topics could, given time, gain enough popularity to get a Big 7 newsgroup. There was a rapid growth of alt.* as a result, and the trend continues to this day. Because of the anarchistic nature with which the groups sprang up, some jokingly referred to ALT standing for "Anarchists, Lunatics and Terrorists" (a backronym).

The Millennial and Gen X Alt-Right ranged from not being alive in 1986 and ’87 to not being old enough to drive. The “alt” prefix is all Nirvana.

The heyday of the Usenet was actually the early/mid 1990's, when many more people had an internet connection. If fact, it still exists today - warning if you go on it now, be prepared to do many virus scans afterward.

Funny thing, the Bon Jovi type acts can be traced back to glam rock, of course, but also hard rock/heavy metal acts from the 70s, like Van Halen and Aerosmith. Bands which fulfilled a lot of the cliches of punk and grunge, like do-it-yourself, building followings outside the promotion superstructure, playing live on the recordings with minimal tricks, being (selectively) offensive, loud and brash musically, and so on. But no one confuses them for the alternative scene, even when they're not doing what happens to be popular. (Van Halen hit when disco was king.)

That's because it's obvious they wanted people to like them.

That’s because it’s obvious they wanted people to like them.

Early Van Halen were the cool kids. You don’t get to be a cool kid by people-pleasing. They were like a cross between the Beach Boys and Sabbath.

That generational thing continues to annoy me. I fit in that window. My parents were definitely Boomers, which I guess makes me technically a Gen Xer, tail-end Gen-X at best. But growing up I remember them calling us Generation Y. Then Generation Y disappeared, and they started in with the Millennial crap.

I graduated in 2000, so I was barely an adult before the new millennium. I also barely remember not having the internet or cell phones. Does that make me a Millennial? But I also remember Nirvana happening. That doesn't fit. Who cares?

You see how arbitrary are the distinctions. People seem to forget babies are born constantly

Like all generalizations, these labels are not intended to perfect. But, I agree with your point, particularly with regards to the Boomers. Sailer is technically a Boomer, but I doubt he can relate to the people who were getting stoned during the summer of love. He was too young. Throwing him in the same bucket as a broken down old woman like Hillary Clinton does not make much sense.

The Baby Boom was a real thing, although in its case it was such a huge thing that it makes sense to split out the lucky Early Baby Boomers (Bill, Hill, Dubya, Bowie, OJ, etc.) from the large number of Late Boomers (me, Obama, Prince, lots of people). We Late Boomers had it pretty sweet, but not as sweet as the Early Boomers who had little in the way of competition ahead of them in life. We Late Boomers had lots of Early Boomers clogging up all the good jobs and imposing their cultural tastes on us. (There are worse fates in life, of course ...)

In a lot of ways, the luckiest guys were the pre-Boomers like Elvis, Dylan, Lennon, Jagger etc. who grew up with a giant number of Early Boomers to worship them.

Yes, the generational distinctions can be very fuzzy. My sister was born in 1964, so where does that put her? My oldest sister was born in 1957 so I suppose she is definitely a boomer. Then I came along in 1968, not a boomer certainly! But we're all just 11 years apart (2 brothers in there too) in total. How can kids born only 11 years apart be from different generations and get different labels?

Is the Nick Lowe song "I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass" a tribute to Bowie's "Breaking Glass?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaT6oZOW0vo

Huh. That’s the first time I’ve heard that Bowie song. I’ve never sat down and listened to his album “Low” (despite it being an influence on the sound of Elvis Costello and the Attractions album “Armed Forces”).

I’ve done a search and found a site that claims the Lowe song is a parody of the Bowie song:

This is a parody of David Bowie’s song, “Breaking Glass.” Lowe had previously poked fun at Bowie in 1977, when he released an EP titled Bowi, in humorous response to Bowie releasing an album titled Low, which lacked the final ‘e’ of Lowe’s surname.

You'd have to classify heavy metal as mainstream rock at that point. Even the heavier stuff. Metallica's Black Album came out the sane year as Nevermind, and I am willing to bet outsold it.

You’d have to classify heavy metal as mainstream rock at that point. Even the heavier stuff. Metallica’s Black Album came out the sane year as Nevermind, and I am willing to bet outsold it.

Hmmm, Metallica was certainly mainstream at that point, and that album featured four gigantic hits, but I think it is largely just them crossing over. Notwithstanding the Macarena, flamenco music wasn’t mainstream either in the 90′s.

I mean you did not see Slayer collaborating the the SF Symphony Orchestra.

One of my favorite early 90's memories- especially in this age of moronic, Hillary-inspired bear-bating- was watching Metallica drive a YUGE Moscow crowd into absolute frenzy when THE MONSTERS OF ROCK tour played Russia in '91:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrnL8t9fDuk

For me this will always be the moment when the Cold War ended. PS: Is that KGB Colonel Putin at 1:18?

That's what I meant by "Even the heavier stuff." If there was only one speed metal act that made it huge, there were a billion softer acts. Not that the Poisons of the world were necessarily going strong in '91, but Guns and Roses were, for instance. They were plenty hard.

I agree, heavier metal wasn't really mainstream. Metallica had to water down its music before becoming mainstream. (I'm not saying they were doing it only or mainly to achieve commercial success, but had they stayed thrash metal, they'd never become really mainstream.)

Like all generalizations, these labels are not intended to perfect. But, I agree with your point, particularly with regards to the Boomers. Sailer is technically a Boomer, but I doubt he can relate to the people who were getting stoned during the summer of love. He was too young. Throwing him in the same bucket as a broken down old woman like Hillary Clinton does not make much sense.

The Baby Boom was a real thing, although in its case it was such a huge thing that it makes sense to split out the lucky Early Baby Boomers (Bill, Hill, Dubya, Bowie, OJ, etc.) from the large number of Late Boomers (me, Obama, Prince, lots of people). We Late Boomers had it pretty sweet, but not as sweet as the Early Boomers who had little in the way of competition ahead of them in life. We Late Boomers had lots of Early Boomers clogging up all the good jobs and imposing their cultural tastes on us. (There are worse fates in life, of course …)

In a lot of ways, the luckiest guys were the pre-Boomers like Elvis, Dylan, Lennon, Jagger etc. who grew up with a giant number of Early Boomers to worship them.

Regarding the jobs thing, my mom casually mentioned one time a friend of hers who dropped out of college his freshman year because he wasn't studying hard and went to work for a major aerospace engineering corporation. She mentioned this like it wasn't even a big deal. I mean come on, the job market's not too bad now if you have extensive education and work experience but it will never be 'fail out of state university and just get a corporate middle class job' good again. Jesus the early boomers had it good.

We Late Boomers had lots of Early Boomers clogging up all the good jobs and imposing their cultural tastes on us. (There are worse fates in life, of course …)

Yeah, like being male, and Russian, and born in 1920 with only a 20% chance of living to see 1945. Aww, who am I kidding! With their white privilege going for them I'm sure Dante De Blasio would swap places with any one of those Roosky crackers in a heartbeat!

That's probably true. Personally, though, I detach Soundgarden from the other two, I think because they fit better with my taste for classic hard rock and heavy metal. I'm not sure if that's true or I'm being arbitrary, because they can be as sour, fuzzy, and punkish as the rest (see: Ty Cobb). But I like them a lot, lot better.

Could be I just prefer Chris Cornell's voice. Kurt can't sing, and Eddie Vedder was once the most annoying person on the planet to me.

Personally, though, I detach Soundgarden from the other two, I think because they fit better with my taste for classic hard rock and heavy metal.

Yep, I listened to Soundgarden a lot, but no Nirvana/Pearl Jam etc… after coming of age to AC/DC, Ozzy, Hendrix, Metallica in the early/mid 80s.

Sour is a good word for Alt-Rock (especially Tool), but when the mainstream is too sickeningly sweet, sour hits the spot. Same with the Alt-Right or Steve’s Alt-Center.

I wouldn't call it massive popularity, but it certainly upped his hipster quotient. I remember "Ring of Fire" having a resurgence in my teens. It was featured in the feel-bad movie "Feeling Minnesota," one of the many crappy movies filmed in my home state in my youth.

He didn't hit the massive mark until he redid Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt," which must've been in the early 00s.

And they got the reference from the great Minneapolis bands of Husker Du and The Replacements.

For whatever twists of fate I lived through a lot of this. I kinda knew the Uncle Tupelo crew in Champaign and still live in the same neighborhood as the Wilco crowd. X , the great LA punk band more or less created Alt Country with their side project The Knitters (with Dave Alvin from The Blasters). The Alt country thing took off n Chicago with The Waco Brothers, Anna Fermin (a Phillapina chick who can really, really sing) Freakwater and my wife's friends The Handsome Family.

But I have put these things behind. When I was young and foolish I wanted to classify and make connections between bands like a botanist.

It is a drive COMPLETELY different from my current obsession in comparing and contrasting golf holes.

I think you're right about the similarities between the current alt-right and alt-rock's fan base back in its prime years. Even so, my mobile phone seems to think the alt-right is part of the Velvet Underground era. Whenever I rip the audio off an alt-right YouTube video and load it on my phone, it assigns it a Velvet Underground album cover as its thumbnail. So when I hear Richard Spencer talking to Millennial Woes, I see Lou Reed sitting on a sofa.

> So when I hear Richard Spencer talking to Millennial Woes, I see Lou Reed sitting on a sofa.<

The Velvet Underground are way before my time but they stand up very well. True though about the Boomers: those of us born after them but before the Millennials don't really exist when anyone discusses things. We jump from the Boomers collective autobiography, which we all know by heart, to "you guys grew up with the internet!" and skip everything in between.

People learnt to play along with Boomer narcissism though. The Gen X journalists, politicians, academics and artists who did alright tend to just be humourless little photocopies of their mentors.

My favourite definition of that is “any music descended from Sweetheart of the Rodeo”…

Really you mean "late Byrds." Sweetheart of the Rodeo had the best name and cover art, but its two best songs (Pretty Boy Floyd and Blue Canadian Rockies) were inferior to those on the albums before and after.

I think the Replacements, Husker Du, Flaming Lips, Wall of Voodoo, Violent Femmes, X, and the Blasters would all fit Alt-Rock. And they’re not the least bit grunge. They also considerably predate, particularly for X, Nirvana. You could also add the Smiths, Psychedelic Furs, early U2, Simple Minds, Spandau Ballet, OMD, Echo and the Bunnymen, Peter Gabriel, and even Kate Bush. To say nothing of the Bangles, Go-Gos, and B-52s. Were the Celtic Revival bands like Big Country Alt-Rock? Or the Pogues? Or Dropkick Murphys? I’d call em that. I’d add Blur, The Prodigy, and early Police too.

All pretty much fit the bill — FAST, LOUD, syncretic, idiosyncratic/ultra local, not particularly danceable most of the of the time, with generally killer hooks.

All of them borrowed stuff from other styles, the used a lot of reggae riffs and jazz licks, the Blasters were a Rockabilly band, heck the Cramps were psycho-billy, OMD/Echo borrowed a lot of stuff from YES and Starship, but not the mainstream corporate sponsored “this concert brought to you by Budweiser” stuff.*

*F- you Rolling Stone. “We Built This City” is still an awesome song.

In the same way, the Alt-Right is much older than people think. At least as old as Derb’s early stuff, or Steve’s, or for that matter Sam Francis.

There were a bunch of other names for the stuff you mention, like New Wave and Modern Rock. But at some point I want to throw up my hands and just call it all "rock." There haven't been any truly new genres since the 70s, in my opinion. We're merely subdividing genres.

Speaking of Starship, I am currently obsessed with the song "Miracles." In my youth I ignored it as 70s elevator music, but now it feels like an epic sex poem.

The Millennial and Gen X Alt-Right ranged from not being alive in 1986 and '87 to not being old enough to drive. The "alt" prefix is all Nirvana.

The heyday of the Usenet was actually the early/mid 1990′s, when many more people had an internet connection. If fact, it still exists today – warning if you go on it now, be prepared to do many virus scans afterward.

The 90s also saw the rebirth of Johnny Cash with massive popularity among young kids after getting together with producer Rick rubin - what political analogy would that fit? Is that like Ron Paul in 2012? Any other guesses?

Cash gained some young followers in the late 80s/early 90s with rock-a-billy bands bringing him back in view.

The 90s also saw the rebirth of Johnny Cash with massive popularity among young kids after getting together with producer Rick rubin - what political analogy would that fit? Is that like Ron Paul in 2012? Any other guesses?

Cash gained some young followers in the late 80s/early 90s with rock-a-billy bands bringing him back in view.

Joy Divisions name is from the sex slavery wing of a Nazi concentration camp mentioned in the 1955 novel House of Dolls. Lead singer Ian Curtis is rumored to have leaned toward fascism. It's all very Alt-Right but not a very good choice for a Trump campaign song, the media would go insane.

That’s probably true. Personally, though, I detach Soundgarden from the other two, I think because they fit better with my taste for classic hard rock and heavy metal. I’m not sure if that’s true or I’m being arbitrary, because they can be as sour, fuzzy, and punkish as the rest (see: Ty Cobb). But I like them a lot, lot better.

Could be I just prefer Chris Cornell’s voice. Kurt can’t sing, and Eddie Vedder was once the most annoying person on the planet to me.

Pearl Jam came out of Mother Love Bone after lead singer Andrew Wood ODed on smack back around 1990. MLB was more glam than grunge. I liked the band -- Crown of Thorns is pretty good. But can't say I'm a big fan of Vedder. He had a little too much self-importance for the genre.

I met Stone Gossard not all that long ago at my kids' preschool. He was sitting next to me at the parents' orientation and I thought he was a carpenter or something like that until he introduced himself.

Best concert I ever went to was Bumbershoot 1990 with Soundgarden at the Seattle Center Coliseum. Jesus I can hardly believe it was so long ago. That Seattle is long gone. It died right around the same time Kurt Cobain blew his head off.

The alt-right is the space of the political right consisting of people and groups whose rightist politics are chiefly motivated by some form of anti-egalitarianism, and at the same time are not comfortable with associating with the incumbent categories of modern rightist politics.

My proposed definition of alt-lite:

The alt-lite is a ergoregional space surrounding the alt-right, which consists of people and groups whose rightist politics have some noticeable and obvious anti-egalitarian propensities but are not chiefly motivated by anti-egalitarianism, and whose relationships with the incumbent categories of modern rightist politics are generally strained and murky but could range to amicable to hostile, and may be but are not necessarily sympathetic to the alt-right.

I think the Replacements, Husker Du, Flaming Lips, Wall of Voodoo, Violent Femmes, X, and the Blasters would all fit Alt-Rock. And they're not the least bit grunge. They also considerably predate, particularly for X, Nirvana. You could also add the Smiths, Psychedelic Furs, early U2, Simple Minds, Spandau Ballet, OMD, Echo and the Bunnymen, Peter Gabriel, and even Kate Bush. To say nothing of the Bangles, Go-Gos, and B-52s. Were the Celtic Revival bands like Big Country Alt-Rock? Or the Pogues? Or Dropkick Murphys? I'd call em that. I'd add Blur, The Prodigy, and early Police too.

All pretty much fit the bill -- FAST, LOUD, syncretic, idiosyncratic/ultra local, not particularly danceable most of the of the time, with generally killer hooks.

All of them borrowed stuff from other styles, the used a lot of reggae riffs and jazz licks, the Blasters were a Rockabilly band, heck the Cramps were psycho-billy, OMD/Echo borrowed a lot of stuff from YES and Starship, but not the mainstream corporate sponsored "this concert brought to you by Budweiser" stuff.*

*F- you Rolling Stone. "We Built This City" is still an awesome song.

In the same way, the Alt-Right is much older than people think. At least as old as Derb's early stuff, or Steve's, or for that matter Sam Francis.

Prodigy, … not particularly danceable

The Prodigy introduced the raver shuffle to MTV. This cute Russian mom begs to differ:

>
A SPECTER is haunting Eastern Europe: the specter of what in the West is called “dissent.” This specter has not appeared out of thin air. It is a natural and inevitable consequence of the present historical phase of the system it is haunting. It was born at a time when this system, for a thousand reasons, can no longer base itself on the unadulterated, brutal, and arbitrary application of power, eliminating all expressions of nonconformity. What is more, the system has become so ossified politically that there is practically no way for such nonconformity to be implemented within its official structures.

Who are these so-called dissidents? Where does their point of view come from, and what importance does it have? What is the significance of the “independent initiatives” in which “dissidents” collaborate, and what real chances do such initiatives have of success? Is it appropriate to refer to “dissidents” as an opposition? If so, what exactly is such an opposition within the framework of this system? What does it do? What role does it play in society? What are its hopes and on what are they based? Is it within the power of the “dissidents”—as a category of subcitizen outside the power establishment—to have any influence at all on society and the social system? Can they actually change anything?

I think that an examination of these questions—an examination of the potential of the “powerless”—can only begin with an examination of the nature of power in the circumstances in which these powerless people operate.<

One of my favorite musicians and front-man for the alternative bands Camper Van Beethoven & Cracker, David Lowery. He fits the profile of White guy with a three digit IQ from his Wikipedia page

Lowery is a trained mathematician who has worked as a “quant” (a derivatives trader and financial analyst) and has started a number of music-related businesses, including a studio, a record company and a publishing company. Lowery’s extensive experience in business led to his appointment as a lecturer in the University of Georgia’s music business program.

He wrote a song with his band Cracker “Hey Brett You Know What Time It Is?” that is a merger of the Alt-Right with Alt-Rock. From his blog on why he wrote the song.

I’ve never really asked Brett Netson about his politics, but I assume he is generally on the left. Most people in rock bands are-with the apparent exception of Ted Nugent. But i would like to point out that once i got into the songwriting i dispensed with the real brett netson and began to create a fictional character and narrative. In the song the protagonist is a 4th generation Boise Idahoan. A veteran, hard working in his own way: “trying to make a living playing on my SG Gibson tending bar and sometimes selling herb.” But not getting his due. “we live like serfs in this new feudal land we pay the bills we fight the wars”. He’s rightfully angry.

But heres the twist. I wanted to use the language of the right. Because the right is oftentimes better at distilling and identifying many of the injustices and problems in our country than is the left. The left may have a good point but it’s often so convoluted and nuanced it doesn’t have the same emotional impact. They don’t work as well in song lyrics. This was not always the case, think Woody Guthrie.

I realize the right also spends a lot of time on useless fantasies as well. Death panels, Fema concentration camps, forged birth certificates take up an inordinate amount of airtime on right wing talk radio. (Come to think of it, much of this makes good song lyrics –see the camper van Beethoven song writing formula in Joe Stalin’s Cadillac).

The bigger picture is that in our country the center is now hopelessly out of touch with the plight of the common man. Our center is solidly Corporatist, it’s designed to preserve the status quo. But for humans to survive, for our lives to become better generation after generation we must constantly innovate. And that includes our political ideas. We can’t have a static status quo. That is why it is only at the “extremes’ of the political spectrum that you are hearing at least some concern for the average persons plight. For the plight of future generations.

I know i am freaking a lot of you out. Rest assured I’m aware there are ideologues on the left and the right that exploit and manipulate people. Many are shills for powerful interests and when they gain power they’ll forget the concerns of the common man and become a sort of fith column for the elites. And many of their prescriptions are wrong and dangerous. But i don’t care about the leaders. We don’t need leaders anymore. That’s so 1998. This is a networked decentralized world.

I wouldn't call it massive popularity, but it certainly upped his hipster quotient. I remember "Ring of Fire" having a resurgence in my teens. It was featured in the feel-bad movie "Feeling Minnesota," one of the many crappy movies filmed in my home state in my youth.

He didn't hit the massive mark until he redid Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt," which must've been in the early 00s.

Reviving Johnny Cash was the single worst thing hipsters did in the 2000′s.

This Dexter Holland guy, founder of The Offspring, has impressively high IQ white interests. Apart from starting one of the best selling punk rock bands of all time which has sold tens of millions of albums, he is currently a graduate student at USC at the Laboratory of Viral Oncology and Proteomics Research, where he published a computational molecular biological paper in 2013 titled “Identification of Human MicroRNA-Like Sequences Embedded within the Protein-Encoding Genes of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus.”

He also owns his own brand of hot sauce (hot sauce fetishism is a typical white guy interest) called Gringo Bandito and was a co-founder of the record label Nitro Records in the 90′s (when record companies actually made big money) which incubated some popular punk rock bands like AFI. Nitro Records was later acquired by Bicycle Music. He is also a licensed Airline Transport pilot and a certified flight instructor who once made a solo trip around the world. His net worth is estimated at $65 million.

Joy Divisions name is from the sex slavery wing of a Nazi concentration camp mentioned in the 1955 novel House of Dolls. Lead singer Ian Curtis is rumored to have leaned toward fascism. It’s all very Alt-Right but not a very good choice for a Trump campaign song, the media would go insane.

And they got the reference from the great Minneapolis bands of Husker Du and The Replacements.

For whatever twists of fate I lived through a lot of this. I kinda knew the Uncle Tupelo crew in Champaign and still live in the same neighborhood as the Wilco crowd. X , the great LA punk band more or less created Alt Country with their side project The Knitters (with Dave Alvin from The Blasters). The Alt country thing took off n Chicago with The Waco Brothers, Anna Fermin (a Phillapina chick who can really, really sing) Freakwater and my wife’s friends The Handsome Family.

But I have put these things behind. When I was young and foolish I wanted to classify and make connections between bands like a botanist.

It is a drive COMPLETELY different from my current obsession in comparing and contrasting golf holes.

There was an alt-rock station earlier this century based in Long Island. Where I live in Northeastern NJ was at the Western edge of their broadcast range. They were giving away Paul Westerberg tickets once and I guess I was the only one who called in. The DJ picked up and I won them. Got to see him play solo at some place halfway out on Long Island that hosted more MMA fights than concerts I think.

> So when I hear Richard Spencer talking to Millennial Woes, I see Lou Reed sitting on a sofa.<

boomers have big thumbs on the scale

The Velvet Underground are way before my time but they stand up very well. True though about the Boomers: those of us born after them but before the Millennials don’t really exist when anyone discusses things. We jump from the Boomers collective autobiography, which we all know by heart, to “you guys grew up with the internet!” and skip everything in between.

People learnt to play along with Boomer narcissism though. The Gen X journalists, politicians, academics and artists who did alright tend to just be humourless little photocopies of their mentors.

I’ve always assumed that the phrase “alternative right” includes a reference to “alternative rock.” After all, Richard Spencer was about 13 when Nirvana’s alternative rock electrified the airwaves in 1991.

One possible use for the term “Alternative” in politics is to use it to refer to a new orthogonal ideological polarization. For several decades, the central pole has been “left vs. right” organized around questions like how high should the capital gains tax be?

The “alternative” in “alternative right” already refers to something “beyond left and right”. Spencer chose the “alternative” as another term for the “third way” or “third positionism” or “third alternative” of European politics, which he is interested in. That’s the source of the term, not alternative-rock music.

The Third Position, Third Way or Third Alternative is a political position that emphasizes opposition to both communism and capitalism. Advocates of Third Position politics typically present themselves as “beyond left and right”, while syncretizing ideas from each end of the political spectrum, usually reactionary right-wing cultural views and radical left-wing economic views.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7]

Third Positionists often[quantify] seek alliances with separatists of ethnicities and races other than their own, with the goal of achieving peaceful ethnic and racial coexistence, a form of segregation emphasizing self-determination and preservation of cultural differences. They support national liberation movements in the least-developed countries, and have recently embraced environmentalism.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7]

The term Third Position was coined[by whom?] in early 20th-century[citation needed] Europe, and the main precursors of Third Position politics were National Bolshevism (a synthesis of nationalism and Bolshevik communism) and Strasserism (a radical, mass-action and worker-based form of Nazism, advocated by the left-wing of the Nazi Party until it was crushed in the Night of the Long Knives in 1934).[1][2][3][4][5][6][7]

Political scientist Roger Griffin dismisses Third Positionist claims of being “beyond left and right” as specious. He interprets Third Positionism as an ideological mutation of the far right, one which rejects both Marxism and liberalism for a synthesis of palingenetic ultranationalism with either socialism, distributism, corporatism or anarchism.[5]

How can something be both "beyond left and right" and of the right? If it was truly Third Way it wouldn't be the alt-right, would it? This Spencer is either being oxymoronic or too clever by half. Although, he's not alone, because what I most associate with third way-ism is "social democracy." Which to my mind is warmed over socialism, and not a third way at all. It's just the second way over again.

You make Spencer sound like a Hegelian, which gives me the willies. Scratch that, it puts me to sleep before I have time for the willies.

Joy Divisions name is from the sex slavery wing of a Nazi concentration camp mentioned in the 1955 novel House of Dolls. Lead singer Ian Curtis is rumored to have leaned toward fascism. It's all very Alt-Right but not a very good choice for a Trump campaign song, the media would go insane.

Trump campaign should go with Melania Trump’s fellow Slovenians, Laibach. They have an East Bloc feel to them:

Finding the non-white in the Tool audience is like finding Waldo. Something about non-danceable music and obscure time signatures, along with music complex enough to require multiple listens to properly enjoy is a very white guy thing. Maynard OTOH has compared Trump to Hitler.

If Trump is going to be anyone from Germany in the 1930s it’s Hindenburg. It’s possible a WN might follow Trump, not an anti-Semite though. But Trump can really only provoke some demographic stasis and better thought out domestic and foreign policy.

I'd say Tool's (seen twice) crowd is pretty much the same as Rush's (seen 5 times) crowd: pretty intelligent and 95% white males, but that could just be their fans in Boston. Lot of air drumming at both shows, as Neil Peart and Danny Carey are among the best.

Steve, you had a previous comment on tall rockers. Carey is a linebacker-like 6'5"and Peart is 6'4".

@Steve Sailer One of my favorite musicians and front-man for the alternative bands Camper Van Beethoven & Cracker, David Lowery. He fits the profile of White guy with a three digit IQ from his Wikipedia page

Lowery is a trained mathematician who has worked as a "quant" (a derivatives trader and financial analyst) and has started a number of music-related businesses, including a studio, a record company and a publishing company. Lowery's extensive experience in business led to his appointment as a lecturer in the University of Georgia's music business program.

He wrote a song with his band Cracker "Hey Brett You Know What Time It Is?" that is a merger of the Alt-Right with Alt-Rock. From his blog on why he wrote the song.

I’ve never really asked Brett Netson about his politics, but I assume he is generally on the left. Most people in rock bands are-with the apparent exception of Ted Nugent. But i would like to point out that once i got into the songwriting i dispensed with the real brett netson and began to create a fictional character and narrative. In the song the protagonist is a 4th generation Boise Idahoan. A veteran, hard working in his own way: “trying to make a living playing on my SG Gibson tending bar and sometimes selling herb.” But not getting his due. “we live like serfs in this new feudal land we pay the bills we fight the wars”. He’s rightfully angry.

But heres the twist. I wanted to use the language of the right. Because the right is oftentimes better at distilling and identifying many of the injustices and problems in our country than is the left. The left may have a good point but it’s often so convoluted and nuanced it doesn’t have the same emotional impact. They don’t work as well in song lyrics. This was not always the case, think Woody Guthrie.

I realize the right also spends a lot of time on useless fantasies as well. Death panels, Fema concentration camps, forged birth certificates take up an inordinate amount of airtime on right wing talk radio. (Come to think of it, much of this makes good song lyrics –see the camper van Beethoven song writing formula in Joe Stalin’s Cadillac).

The bigger picture is that in our country the center is now hopelessly out of touch with the plight of the common man. Our center is solidly Corporatist, it’s designed to preserve the status quo. But for humans to survive, for our lives to become better generation after generation we must constantly innovate. And that includes our political ideas. We can’t have a static status quo. That is why it is only at the “extremes’ of the political spectrum that you are hearing at least some concern for the average persons plight. For the plight of future generations.

I know i am freaking a lot of you out. Rest assured I’m aware there are ideologues on the left and the right that exploit and manipulate people. Many are shills for powerful interests and when they gain power they’ll forget the concerns of the common man and become a sort of fith column for the elites. And many of their prescriptions are wrong and dangerous. But i don’t care about the leaders. We don’t need leaders anymore. That’s so 1998. This is a networked decentralized world.

I’m more interested in the rank and file followers of these so-called right wing or left wing ideologues. And here is why: when I talk to the individuals that identify with political ideas outside the mainstream (with the exception of racists and religious fanatics-let me be absolutely clear) I almost invariably find that they possess more compassion and empathy for their fellow citizens than you will find from virtually any elected official in this country. Further they tend to be thinking about the big long term problems we face as a country, as a civilization. Read the entire blog here http://www.davidlowerymusic.com/300-songs-blog/blog/21-hey-brett-you-know-what-time-it-is-cracker-the-ballad-of-brett-netson-the-center-cannot-hold-also-the-wobblies-vs-wombles

and the song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgH5GQqXUSM

One of my favorite musicians and front-man for the alternative bands Camper Van Beethoven & Cracker, David Lowery.

I had no idea, despite listening to Camper’s version of Pictures of Matchstick Men and Cracker’s Low basically every time I go running.

My favourite definition of that is “any music descended from Sweetheart of the Rodeo”…

Really you mean "late Byrds." Sweetheart of the Rodeo had the best name and cover art, but its two best songs (Pretty Boy Floyd and Blue Canadian Rockies) were inferior to those on the albums before and after.

I haven’t taken a scientific survey or anything, but I can fairly confidently state you’re in the minority on that one. Listen to what you like, like what you like, but SotR is simply more influential.

And they got the reference from the great Minneapolis bands of Husker Du and The Replacements.

For whatever twists of fate I lived through a lot of this. I kinda knew the Uncle Tupelo crew in Champaign and still live in the same neighborhood as the Wilco crowd. X , the great LA punk band more or less created Alt Country with their side project The Knitters (with Dave Alvin from The Blasters). The Alt country thing took off n Chicago with The Waco Brothers, Anna Fermin (a Phillapina chick who can really, really sing) Freakwater and my wife's friends The Handsome Family.

But I have put these things behind. When I was young and foolish I wanted to classify and make connections between bands like a botanist.

It is a drive COMPLETELY different from my current obsession in comparing and contrasting golf holes.

Here’s my wife’s songwriting teacher at Chicago’s Old Town School of Folk Music, Robbie Fulks:

And they got the reference from the great Minneapolis bands of Husker Du and The Replacements.

For whatever twists of fate I lived through a lot of this. I kinda knew the Uncle Tupelo crew in Champaign and still live in the same neighborhood as the Wilco crowd. X , the great LA punk band more or less created Alt Country with their side project The Knitters (with Dave Alvin from The Blasters). The Alt country thing took off n Chicago with The Waco Brothers, Anna Fermin (a Phillapina chick who can really, really sing) Freakwater and my wife's friends The Handsome Family.

But I have put these things behind. When I was young and foolish I wanted to classify and make connections between bands like a botanist.

It is a drive COMPLETELY different from my current obsession in comparing and contrasting golf holes.

There was an alt-rock station earlier this century based in Long Island. Where I live in Northeastern NJ was at the Western edge of their broadcast range. They were giving away Paul Westerberg tickets once and I guess I was the only one who called in. The DJ picked up and I won them. Got to see him play solo at some place halfway out on Long Island that hosted more MMA fights than concerts I think.

They were giving away Paul Westerberg tickets once and I guess I was the only one who called in ... Got to see him play solo at some place halfway out on Long Island that hosted more MMA fights than concerts I think.

I saw Morrissey in a banquet hall in Maryland under similar circumstances during a slump in his career (touring for Southpaw Grammar, if memory serves).

He walked onstage, looked around, and said to the crowd: "Welcome to my Bar Mitzvah," before delivering a totally righteous performance.

I’d say that the alt-right, or more generally alt-* term should be indeed be based on the globalism vs. localism (maybe better: nationalism) axis.

Why? Because it is so basic, and it is precisely the sort of political organization to be found not just in the US, but in Europe. In the end, the political divisions upon which people actually organize themselves have to be decisive: no political philosophy is going to get any traction without voters/citizens lining up behind it.

And of course “nationalism” appeals to a very natural and basic human impulse to identify with, support, and be supported by, a group. And certainly it has taken many forms that seem not just benign, but generous — such as the nationalism of Eisenhower and Stevenson.

Globalism as it has been implemented has taken an extraordinary toll on the middle and lower classes in the US, and, I’d expect, elsewhere. It is also the natural, self-serving philosophy of the elites. Because of how it pits the interests of different economic classes within a nation against each other, also, it represents a deep political organizing principle.

But any number of other kinds of philosophies/policies are, at least at first blush, consistent with being on the nationalistic, alt-* side, ranging, for example, from libertarian to socialistic. It makes sense then to talk about some of those philosophies/policies as constituting the alt-right, others alt-center, and still others alt-left.

The difference is that alt-rock became the mainstream rock of the 90s following Nirvana's success.

Alt-rock existed in the 80s with bands like Dinosaur Jr. and the Meat Puppets, but it wasn't very mainstream. It was sort of the indie and underground rock of the 80s. Bon Jovi style hard glam rock was the mainstream then.

After alt-rock became mainstream rock in the 90s, indie rock became a sort of catchall for all non mainstream, non alt-rock bands that played variations of older pre alt-rock styles. Then indie rock itself became mainstream in the 2000s with bands like the Strokes.

Janes Addiction was another band alt-rock band which had a big following in the 80s but really took off in the 90s. Perry Farrel then started the Lollapalooza festival as a farewell tour for his band in 1991. It was at Lollapalooza where Farrell coined the term “Alternative Nation” to describe the festival

To quote the grumpy German phyiscs professor, this is so bad it is not even wrong. There might be some valid parallels between 70′s punk and today’s alt-right- mainly in that both opposed a smug, upper-middle class, Rosseau-inspired liberalism (in the punk’s case, peace-n-love, “gentle people” hippies; in the alt-right’s case, “not who we are”, micro-aggression huntin’ SJW’s), but in the case of late-80′s/early-90′s alternative music- particularly “grunge”- NOT ON YOUR FREAKIN’ LIFE!

Kurt Cobain is not some spiritual godfather for today’s Richard Spencers. He is the direct antecedent for every one of today’s wimpy, male-feminist, BLM/LGBTQWRTY-”allied” manboobs. If there was any politico-cultural core to grunge, it was a seething hatred of every fibre in the being of America’s red-blooded, manly, patriotic, straight dudes. Alt-rock in its NIRVANA-led strain used the trappings of what it derisively called “cock rock” to ultimately subvert and destroy the traditional American male ethos rock once embodied.

Some highlights-

* NIRVANA pioneered the male feminist anti-date rape protest song which every other 90′s alternative act would go on to copy, whether they were credible talents in their own right (PEARL JAM) or a cynically-created poseur group like BUSH (to quote the former Mr. Gwen Stefani- “there’s no sex in your violence”)
* NIRVANA practiced the art of gender-pandering- they played several benefits for Bosnian rape victims, even as many more Yugoslav men and BOYS were being butchered over the course of the same war; a very “world ends, women and minorities hit hardest” sort of moment
* obnoxiously pro-homosexual and gender-bending- Cobain offered that he was sad he hadn’t been born gay; copy-cat poseur Scott Weiland of STONE TEMPLE PILOTS wore a dress in the video of his group’s anti-date rape song SEX TYPE THING
* anti-gun, and of course happy to link firearm culture to male sexual inadaquecy in fine cult-marx fashion (PEARL JAM – GLORIFIED G/ NINE INCH NAILS – BIG MAN WITH A GUN)
* anti-white – at a time when the only people who had read WHITE PRIVILEGE – THE INVISIBLE KNAPSACK were the author and her mother, PEARL JAM came out with the song WMA [WHITE MALE AMERICAN] – opening line- “He won the lottery, by being born”
* hag-flattering – back before it was a political crime to say feminist hags like Lena Dunham were anything but “HOT!”, Cobain walked-the-walk and married feminist attention-whore/casting-couch skank* Courtney Love

*she has a bit part in the pretty good Sid Vicous bio-pic SID & NANCY starring the always-excellent Gary Oldman

I don't think the point was what they stood for, the content of their lyrics, the group members' personal politics, or even their aesthetics, though I think there are some interesting parallels. Unlike with the fascist leanings of punk, grunge fell in the PC era, and there can be no uncompromised art in such times, lest it be alternative-alternative. You wouldn't have mainstream success, nor be the darlings of the hipsters like Nirvana.

The point is what alt-rock represented relative to mainstream rock. Conservatism, Inc. is "cock rock," the alt-right is grunge. Simple as that.

A year after Nevermind hit #1, Nirvana released Incesticide, a collection of material the band recorded prior to 1991. The initial pressings included these liner notes written by Cobain, signed "Kurdt (the blonde one.)"

The Baby Boom was a real thing, although in its case it was such a huge thing that it makes sense to split out the lucky Early Baby Boomers (Bill, Hill, Dubya, Bowie, OJ, etc.) from the large number of Late Boomers (me, Obama, Prince, lots of people). We Late Boomers had it pretty sweet, but not as sweet as the Early Boomers who had little in the way of competition ahead of them in life. We Late Boomers had lots of Early Boomers clogging up all the good jobs and imposing their cultural tastes on us. (There are worse fates in life, of course ...)

In a lot of ways, the luckiest guys were the pre-Boomers like Elvis, Dylan, Lennon, Jagger etc. who grew up with a giant number of Early Boomers to worship them.

Regarding the jobs thing, my mom casually mentioned one time a friend of hers who dropped out of college his freshman year because he wasn’t studying hard and went to work for a major aerospace engineering corporation. She mentioned this like it wasn’t even a big deal. I mean come on, the job market’s not too bad now if you have extensive education and work experience but it will never be ‘fail out of state university and just get a corporate middle class job’ good again. Jesus the early boomers had it good.

I wish I had not read your post. I'm at a "job" now too. *triggered* as the p-generation says. I need to avoid the "old economy steve" meme type stuff and any talk about what the god awful early Boomers had. I suppose I could snap one day.

Janes Addiction was another band alt-rock band which had a big following in the 80s but really took off in the 90s. Perry Farrel then started the Lollapalooza festival as a farewell tour for his band in 1991. It was at Lollapalooza where Farrell coined the term "Alternative Nation" to describe the festival

Los Angeles venture capitalist Mark Suster once tweeted about a benefit concert at his kids’ private school. Perry Farrel played it, because his kid or kids went there too.

To quote the grumpy German phyiscs professor, this is so bad it is not even wrong. There might be some valid parallels between 70's punk and today's alt-right- mainly in that both opposed a smug, upper-middle class, Rosseau-inspired liberalism (in the punk's case, peace-n-love, "gentle people" hippies; in the alt-right's case, "not who we are", micro-aggression huntin' SJW's), but in the case of late-80's/early-90's alternative music- particularly "grunge"- NOT ON YOUR FREAKIN' LIFE!

Kurt Cobain is not some spiritual godfather for today's Richard Spencers. He is the direct antecedent for every one of today's wimpy, male-feminist, BLM/LGBTQWRTY-"allied" manboobs. If there was any politico-cultural core to grunge, it was a seething hatred of every fibre in the being of America's red-blooded, manly, patriotic, straight dudes. Alt-rock in its NIRVANA-led strain used the trappings of what it derisively called "cock rock" to ultimately subvert and destroy the traditional American male ethos rock once embodied.

Some highlights-

* NIRVANA pioneered the male feminist anti-date rape protest song which every other 90's alternative act would go on to copy, whether they were credible talents in their own right (PEARL JAM) or a cynically-created poseur group like BUSH (to quote the former Mr. Gwen Stefani- "there's no sex in your violence")
* NIRVANA practiced the art of gender-pandering- they played several benefits for Bosnian rape victims, even as many more Yugoslav men and BOYS were being butchered over the course of the same war; a very "world ends, women and minorities hit hardest" sort of moment
* obnoxiously pro-homosexual and gender-bending- Cobain offered that he was sad he hadn't been born gay; copy-cat poseur Scott Weiland of STONE TEMPLE PILOTS wore a dress in the video of his group's anti-date rape song SEX TYPE THING
* anti-gun, and of course happy to link firearm culture to male sexual inadaquecy in fine cult-marx fashion (PEARL JAM - GLORIFIED G/ NINE INCH NAILS - BIG MAN WITH A GUN)
* anti-white - at a time when the only people who had read WHITE PRIVILEGE - THE INVISIBLE KNAPSACK were the author and her mother, PEARL JAM came out with the song WMA [WHITE MALE AMERICAN] - opening line- "He won the lottery, by being born"
* hag-flattering - back before it was a political crime to say feminist hags like Lena Dunham were anything but "HOT!", Cobain walked-the-walk and married feminist attention-whore/casting-couch skank* Courtney Love

*she has a bit part in the pretty good Sid Vicous bio-pic SID & NANCY starring the always-excellent Gary Oldman

Before it went off the air, I listened to the late Indie 103.1, which featured the amiable Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones as their star DJ.

Jonesy’s Jukebox with the Shire of Wilshire! Great show. Amiable is a perfect description of Steve Jones’ radio persona, quite the contrast with his bandmate Johnny Rotten. I still have the Indie 103.1 App on my iPhone, not that I think it plays anything. Indie 103.1 had a pretty sweet mix of old school punk, new wave and contemporary indie music.

The iPod killed the radio star, but LA car culture meant that LA radio still had quality offerings well in to the mid-2000s. There are a lot of people with good musical taste stuck in traffic on the 405. When visiting LA, I assumed that Indie 103.1 was the reason why so many Mexican teens wore t-shirts implying they liked the same bands I do. Strange time warp to see crowds of 15 year olds leaving high school in The Smiths and Nirvana shirts.

The melancholy of Grunge and Alternative Rock does express a certain implicit nature of White people. Rock is largely dead now, in part because all music runs its cycle, but also because rock was a White musical form (obviously with Black roots, but still very White) and demographics have shifted so much that the culture no longer supports it as a mass musical form.

All we have left on the pop music cultural front is Taylor Swift PBUH.

When I first heard ‘alt-right’, I immediately associated it with ‘alt-country’, rather than ‘alt-rock’, which is a much more vague and meaningless thing today. Whereas alt-country, or Americana, means a mix of oldsters once but no longer played on country radio and hipsters who never would be.

And alt-country audiences tend to skew pretty left, as do the artists-I can’t think of any that could be considered right wing. Mainstream country artists are likely to be either moderately left or Establishment Conservative. So “alt-right” probably tweaks them.

To quote the grumpy German phyiscs professor, this is so bad it is not even wrong. There might be some valid parallels between 70's punk and today's alt-right- mainly in that both opposed a smug, upper-middle class, Rosseau-inspired liberalism (in the punk's case, peace-n-love, "gentle people" hippies; in the alt-right's case, "not who we are", micro-aggression huntin' SJW's), but in the case of late-80's/early-90's alternative music- particularly "grunge"- NOT ON YOUR FREAKIN' LIFE!

Kurt Cobain is not some spiritual godfather for today's Richard Spencers. He is the direct antecedent for every one of today's wimpy, male-feminist, BLM/LGBTQWRTY-"allied" manboobs. If there was any politico-cultural core to grunge, it was a seething hatred of every fibre in the being of America's red-blooded, manly, patriotic, straight dudes. Alt-rock in its NIRVANA-led strain used the trappings of what it derisively called "cock rock" to ultimately subvert and destroy the traditional American male ethos rock once embodied.

Some highlights-

* NIRVANA pioneered the male feminist anti-date rape protest song which every other 90's alternative act would go on to copy, whether they were credible talents in their own right (PEARL JAM) or a cynically-created poseur group like BUSH (to quote the former Mr. Gwen Stefani- "there's no sex in your violence")
* NIRVANA practiced the art of gender-pandering- they played several benefits for Bosnian rape victims, even as many more Yugoslav men and BOYS were being butchered over the course of the same war; a very "world ends, women and minorities hit hardest" sort of moment
* obnoxiously pro-homosexual and gender-bending- Cobain offered that he was sad he hadn't been born gay; copy-cat poseur Scott Weiland of STONE TEMPLE PILOTS wore a dress in the video of his group's anti-date rape song SEX TYPE THING
* anti-gun, and of course happy to link firearm culture to male sexual inadaquecy in fine cult-marx fashion (PEARL JAM - GLORIFIED G/ NINE INCH NAILS - BIG MAN WITH A GUN)
* anti-white - at a time when the only people who had read WHITE PRIVILEGE - THE INVISIBLE KNAPSACK were the author and her mother, PEARL JAM came out with the song WMA [WHITE MALE AMERICAN] - opening line- "He won the lottery, by being born"
* hag-flattering - back before it was a political crime to say feminist hags like Lena Dunham were anything but "HOT!", Cobain walked-the-walk and married feminist attention-whore/casting-couch skank* Courtney Love

*she has a bit part in the pretty good Sid Vicous bio-pic SID & NANCY starring the always-excellent Gary Oldman

Like William Shatner and Liza Minnelli, Love is a non-actress, who plays herself very well. If you want a skank, Courtney is a first call.

When I first heard 'alt-right', I immediately associated it with 'alt-country', rather than 'alt-rock', which is a much more vague and meaningless thing today. Whereas alt-country, or Americana, means a mix of oldsters once but no longer played on country radio and hipsters who never would be.

And alt-country audiences tend to skew pretty left, as do the artists-I can't think of any that could be considered right wing. Mainstream country artists are likely to be either moderately left or Establishment Conservative. So "alt-right" probably tweaks them.

Did you ever catch The Mekons when you lived in Chicago? In some ways, they were the first Alt-Country band. Intriguing embrace of Americana by nihilistic post-punk English art students. Fear and Whiskey is a seminal Alt-Country album.

Joy Divisions name is from the sex slavery wing of a Nazi concentration camp mentioned in the 1955 novel House of Dolls. Lead singer Ian Curtis is rumored to have leaned toward fascism. It's all very Alt-Right but not a very good choice for a Trump campaign song, the media would go insane.

Joy Division’s name is from the sex slavery wing of a Nazi concentration camp mentioned in the 1955 novel House of Dolls.

A little more than mentioned!
If you want to read it, you can download House of Dolls legally and free from the Internet Archives.

I like your point about Trump and the “alt-center.” Conservatives were lambasted in alt-right media for attacking Trump’s “New York values” and his not being a “true conservative.” But, basically, they’re right. It’s just that no one cares about true conservatism anymore. He’s not an alt-righter, either, but the alt-right doesn’t care because he is with them on the three big issues: immigration, trade, and empire.

The Left, despite the hysteria, really should be celebrating. Because Trump is the most liberal (or “liberal”) Republican candidate of my lifetime, in a way. He’s basically a 90s-era Clinton Democrat, including immigration policy, minus free trade, humanitarian intervention, and political correctness. For today’s Democrat, note he’s friendly to the gays and the Jews, he hasn’t threatened the Welfare State, he’s not beholden to Wall Street, and he’s an anti-hawk (though not a dove). I don’t even know whether or not he likes abortion.

But to show you where the bipartisan consensus lies, the three biggies are enough for elites of both brands to cast him into the darkness. You must be an interventionist, for whatever reason (for “economic interest” or for the gays). You must be open borders. You must be pro-free trade. Or “free” trade. This is non-negotiable.

In a sane country Trump would be considered a centrist-centrist, not an alt-centrist. An eccentric centrist, maybe, but he is objectively a centrist, I believe. There is overwhelming support for closing the borders among the people. But this is a democracy (or “democracy”), so why would something like that determine whether you’re on the fringe or not?

You’d have to classify heavy metal as mainstream rock at that point. Even the heavier stuff. Metallica’s Black Album came out the sane year as Nevermind, and I am willing to bet outsold it.

Hmmm, Metallica was certainly mainstream at that point, and that album featured four gigantic hits, but I think it is largely just them crossing over. Notwithstanding the Macarena, flamenco music wasn't mainstream either in the 90's.

I mean you did not see Slayer collaborating the the SF Symphony Orchestra.

https://youtu.be/YpoHBTeyFxg?t=35s

One of my favorite early 90′s memories- especially in this age of moronic, Hillary-inspired bear-bating- was watching Metallica drive a YUGE Moscow crowd into absolute frenzy when THE MONSTERS OF ROCK tour played Russia in ’91:

For me this will always be the moment when the Cold War ended. PS: Is that KGB Colonel Putin at 1:18?

The 1989 Moscow Concert was even better. In 1989, both Communism and Hair Metal were still viable. Interesting that they collapsed virtually simultaneously. There might be something to that, once the dedicated enemy falls so does mindless, virile masculine music.

The Velvet Underground are way before my time but they stand up very well. True though about the Boomers: those of us born after them but before the Millennials don't really exist when anyone discusses things. We jump from the Boomers collective autobiography, which we all know by heart, to "you guys grew up with the internet!" and skip everything in between.

People learnt to play along with Boomer narcissism though. The Gen X journalists, politicians, academics and artists who did alright tend to just be humourless little photocopies of their mentors.

People learnt to play along with Boomer narcissism though. The Gen X journalists, politicians, academics and artists who did alright tend to just be humourless little photocopies of their mentors.

Of all the detrimental effects of Boomer solipsism, this one may turn out to be the most grave.

Yes, the Boomers across the West were raised to be Year Zero people: born clean of the original sin of mankind before 1945. Nothing really came before them but a Dark Age and nothing good could possible come after them except little versions of themselves. Anything that came after them, that wasn't in harmony with them, must be a corruption of the ideal. It doesn't belong in the current year and must be stamped out if this post-1945, multi-generational magic spell is going to work.

Boomers have come to accept the Millennials right to exist within their reality because: A) they're stuck having to finally admit there are people around younger than them B) they are their own children. The fear now is that the Millennials will turn out to be a Basket of Deplorables and the last 50 years of social engineering will have been for nought.

One of my favorite early 90's memories- especially in this age of moronic, Hillary-inspired bear-bating- was watching Metallica drive a YUGE Moscow crowd into absolute frenzy when THE MONSTERS OF ROCK tour played Russia in '91:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrnL8t9fDuk

For me this will always be the moment when the Cold War ended. PS: Is that KGB Colonel Putin at 1:18?

Was AC-DC on that tour? I recall tuning in midway through an ACDC set and trying to figure out where this concert was.

You’d have to classify heavy metal as mainstream rock at that point. Even the heavier stuff. Metallica’s Black Album came out the sane year as Nevermind, and I am willing to bet outsold it.

Hmmm, Metallica was certainly mainstream at that point, and that album featured four gigantic hits, but I think it is largely just them crossing over. Notwithstanding the Macarena, flamenco music wasn't mainstream either in the 90's.

I mean you did not see Slayer collaborating the the SF Symphony Orchestra.

https://youtu.be/YpoHBTeyFxg?t=35s

That’s what I meant by “Even the heavier stuff.” If there was only one speed metal act that made it huge, there were a billion softer acts. Not that the Poisons of the world were necessarily going strong in ’91, but Guns and Roses were, for instance. They were plenty hard.

The Baby Boom was a real thing, although in its case it was such a huge thing that it makes sense to split out the lucky Early Baby Boomers (Bill, Hill, Dubya, Bowie, OJ, etc.) from the large number of Late Boomers (me, Obama, Prince, lots of people). We Late Boomers had it pretty sweet, but not as sweet as the Early Boomers who had little in the way of competition ahead of them in life. We Late Boomers had lots of Early Boomers clogging up all the good jobs and imposing their cultural tastes on us. (There are worse fates in life, of course ...)

In a lot of ways, the luckiest guys were the pre-Boomers like Elvis, Dylan, Lennon, Jagger etc. who grew up with a giant number of Early Boomers to worship them.

We Late Boomers had lots of Early Boomers clogging up all the good jobs and imposing their cultural tastes on us. (There are worse fates in life, of course …)

Yeah, like being male, and Russian, and born in 1920 with only a 20% chance of living to see 1945. Aww, who am I kidding! With their white privilege going for them I’m sure Dante De Blasio would swap places with any one of those Roosky crackers in a heartbeat!

And they got the reference from the great Minneapolis bands of Husker Du and The Replacements.

For whatever twists of fate I lived through a lot of this. I kinda knew the Uncle Tupelo crew in Champaign and still live in the same neighborhood as the Wilco crowd. X , the great LA punk band more or less created Alt Country with their side project The Knitters (with Dave Alvin from The Blasters). The Alt country thing took off n Chicago with The Waco Brothers, Anna Fermin (a Phillapina chick who can really, really sing) Freakwater and my wife's friends The Handsome Family.

But I have put these things behind. When I was young and foolish I wanted to classify and make connections between bands like a botanist.

It is a drive COMPLETELY different from my current obsession in comparing and contrasting golf holes.

I grew up a little later than those acts, but I do remember the hometown grunge band Soul Asylum making it big. But as far as big Minnesota acts from my childhood, it was pretty much all Prince.

David Allan Coe would have been one of the most successful songwriters in Nashville if he hadn't released a few "for bikers only" records that were obscene and used epithets for blacks and other groups. Although he's had some success since then he has definitely been snubbed by many.

I think the Replacements, Husker Du, Flaming Lips, Wall of Voodoo, Violent Femmes, X, and the Blasters would all fit Alt-Rock. And they're not the least bit grunge. They also considerably predate, particularly for X, Nirvana. You could also add the Smiths, Psychedelic Furs, early U2, Simple Minds, Spandau Ballet, OMD, Echo and the Bunnymen, Peter Gabriel, and even Kate Bush. To say nothing of the Bangles, Go-Gos, and B-52s. Were the Celtic Revival bands like Big Country Alt-Rock? Or the Pogues? Or Dropkick Murphys? I'd call em that. I'd add Blur, The Prodigy, and early Police too.

All pretty much fit the bill -- FAST, LOUD, syncretic, idiosyncratic/ultra local, not particularly danceable most of the of the time, with generally killer hooks.

All of them borrowed stuff from other styles, the used a lot of reggae riffs and jazz licks, the Blasters were a Rockabilly band, heck the Cramps were psycho-billy, OMD/Echo borrowed a lot of stuff from YES and Starship, but not the mainstream corporate sponsored "this concert brought to you by Budweiser" stuff.*

*F- you Rolling Stone. "We Built This City" is still an awesome song.

In the same way, the Alt-Right is much older than people think. At least as old as Derb's early stuff, or Steve's, or for that matter Sam Francis.

There were a bunch of other names for the stuff you mention, like New Wave and Modern Rock. But at some point I want to throw up my hands and just call it all “rock.” There haven’t been any truly new genres since the 70s, in my opinion. We’re merely subdividing genres.

Speaking of Starship, I am currently obsessed with the song “Miracles.” In my youth I ignored it as 70s elevator music, but now it feels like an epic sex poem.

The Velvet Underground are way before my time but they stand up very well. True though about the Boomers: those of us born after them but before the Millennials don't really exist when anyone discusses things. We jump from the Boomers collective autobiography, which we all know by heart, to "you guys grew up with the internet!" and skip everything in between.

People learnt to play along with Boomer narcissism though. The Gen X journalists, politicians, academics and artists who did alright tend to just be humourless little photocopies of their mentors.

Wasn’t that the point of calling them “gen x,” the most insulting name for a generation ever? You are an unknown quantity, of course you get overlooked.

One of my favorite early 90's memories- especially in this age of moronic, Hillary-inspired bear-bating- was watching Metallica drive a YUGE Moscow crowd into absolute frenzy when THE MONSTERS OF ROCK tour played Russia in '91:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrnL8t9fDuk

For me this will always be the moment when the Cold War ended. PS: Is that KGB Colonel Putin at 1:18?

The 1989 Moscow Concert was even better. In 1989, both Communism and Hair Metal were still viable. Interesting that they collapsed virtually simultaneously. There might be something to that, once the dedicated enemy falls so does mindless, virile masculine music.

I’ve always assumed that the phrase “alternative right” includes a reference to “alternative rock.” After all, Richard Spencer was about 13 when Nirvana’s alternative rock electrified the airwaves in 1991.

One possible use for the term “Alternative” in politics is to use it to refer to a new orthogonal ideological polarization. For several decades, the central pole has been “left vs. right” organized around questions like how high should the capital gains tax be?

The "alternative" in "alternative right" already refers to something "beyond left and right". Spencer chose the "alternative" as another term for the "third way" or "third positionism" or "third alternative" of European politics, which he is interested in. That's the source of the term, not alternative-rock music.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Position

The Third Position, Third Way or Third Alternative is a political position that emphasizes opposition to both communism and capitalism. Advocates of Third Position politics typically present themselves as "beyond left and right", while syncretizing ideas from each end of the political spectrum, usually reactionary right-wing cultural views and radical left-wing economic views.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7]

Third Positionists often[quantify] seek alliances with separatists of ethnicities and races other than their own, with the goal of achieving peaceful ethnic and racial coexistence, a form of segregation emphasizing self-determination and preservation of cultural differences. They support national liberation movements in the least-developed countries, and have recently embraced environmentalism.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7]

The term Third Position was coined[by whom?] in early 20th-century[citation needed] Europe, and the main precursors of Third Position politics were National Bolshevism (a synthesis of nationalism and Bolshevik communism) and Strasserism (a radical, mass-action and worker-based form of Nazism, advocated by the left-wing of the Nazi Party until it was crushed in the Night of the Long Knives in 1934).[1][2][3][4][5][6][7]

Political scientist Roger Griffin dismisses Third Positionist claims of being "beyond left and right" as specious. He interprets Third Positionism as an ideological mutation of the far right, one which rejects both Marxism and liberalism for a synthesis of palingenetic ultranationalism with either socialism, distributism, corporatism or anarchism.[5]

How can something be both “beyond left and right” and of the right? If it was truly Third Way it wouldn’t be the alt-right, would it? This Spencer is either being oxymoronic or too clever by half. Although, he’s not alone, because what I most associate with third way-ism is “social democracy.” Which to my mind is warmed over socialism, and not a third way at all. It’s just the second way over again.

You make Spencer sound like a Hegelian, which gives me the willies. Scratch that, it puts me to sleep before I have time for the willies.

Joy Divisions name is from the sex slavery wing of a Nazi concentration camp mentioned in the 1955 novel House of Dolls. Lead singer Ian Curtis is rumored to have leaned toward fascism. It's all very Alt-Right but not a very good choice for a Trump campaign song, the media would go insane.

To quote the grumpy German phyiscs professor, this is so bad it is not even wrong. There might be some valid parallels between 70's punk and today's alt-right- mainly in that both opposed a smug, upper-middle class, Rosseau-inspired liberalism (in the punk's case, peace-n-love, "gentle people" hippies; in the alt-right's case, "not who we are", micro-aggression huntin' SJW's), but in the case of late-80's/early-90's alternative music- particularly "grunge"- NOT ON YOUR FREAKIN' LIFE!

Kurt Cobain is not some spiritual godfather for today's Richard Spencers. He is the direct antecedent for every one of today's wimpy, male-feminist, BLM/LGBTQWRTY-"allied" manboobs. If there was any politico-cultural core to grunge, it was a seething hatred of every fibre in the being of America's red-blooded, manly, patriotic, straight dudes. Alt-rock in its NIRVANA-led strain used the trappings of what it derisively called "cock rock" to ultimately subvert and destroy the traditional American male ethos rock once embodied.

Some highlights-

* NIRVANA pioneered the male feminist anti-date rape protest song which every other 90's alternative act would go on to copy, whether they were credible talents in their own right (PEARL JAM) or a cynically-created poseur group like BUSH (to quote the former Mr. Gwen Stefani- "there's no sex in your violence")
* NIRVANA practiced the art of gender-pandering- they played several benefits for Bosnian rape victims, even as many more Yugoslav men and BOYS were being butchered over the course of the same war; a very "world ends, women and minorities hit hardest" sort of moment
* obnoxiously pro-homosexual and gender-bending- Cobain offered that he was sad he hadn't been born gay; copy-cat poseur Scott Weiland of STONE TEMPLE PILOTS wore a dress in the video of his group's anti-date rape song SEX TYPE THING
* anti-gun, and of course happy to link firearm culture to male sexual inadaquecy in fine cult-marx fashion (PEARL JAM - GLORIFIED G/ NINE INCH NAILS - BIG MAN WITH A GUN)
* anti-white - at a time when the only people who had read WHITE PRIVILEGE - THE INVISIBLE KNAPSACK were the author and her mother, PEARL JAM came out with the song WMA [WHITE MALE AMERICAN] - opening line- "He won the lottery, by being born"
* hag-flattering - back before it was a political crime to say feminist hags like Lena Dunham were anything but "HOT!", Cobain walked-the-walk and married feminist attention-whore/casting-couch skank* Courtney Love

*she has a bit part in the pretty good Sid Vicous bio-pic SID & NANCY starring the always-excellent Gary Oldman

You have a good point. The aging “alt” rockstars probably hate the alt right.

To quote the grumpy German phyiscs professor, this is so bad it is not even wrong. There might be some valid parallels between 70's punk and today's alt-right- mainly in that both opposed a smug, upper-middle class, Rosseau-inspired liberalism (in the punk's case, peace-n-love, "gentle people" hippies; in the alt-right's case, "not who we are", micro-aggression huntin' SJW's), but in the case of late-80's/early-90's alternative music- particularly "grunge"- NOT ON YOUR FREAKIN' LIFE!

Kurt Cobain is not some spiritual godfather for today's Richard Spencers. He is the direct antecedent for every one of today's wimpy, male-feminist, BLM/LGBTQWRTY-"allied" manboobs. If there was any politico-cultural core to grunge, it was a seething hatred of every fibre in the being of America's red-blooded, manly, patriotic, straight dudes. Alt-rock in its NIRVANA-led strain used the trappings of what it derisively called "cock rock" to ultimately subvert and destroy the traditional American male ethos rock once embodied.

Some highlights-

* NIRVANA pioneered the male feminist anti-date rape protest song which every other 90's alternative act would go on to copy, whether they were credible talents in their own right (PEARL JAM) or a cynically-created poseur group like BUSH (to quote the former Mr. Gwen Stefani- "there's no sex in your violence")
* NIRVANA practiced the art of gender-pandering- they played several benefits for Bosnian rape victims, even as many more Yugoslav men and BOYS were being butchered over the course of the same war; a very "world ends, women and minorities hit hardest" sort of moment
* obnoxiously pro-homosexual and gender-bending- Cobain offered that he was sad he hadn't been born gay; copy-cat poseur Scott Weiland of STONE TEMPLE PILOTS wore a dress in the video of his group's anti-date rape song SEX TYPE THING
* anti-gun, and of course happy to link firearm culture to male sexual inadaquecy in fine cult-marx fashion (PEARL JAM - GLORIFIED G/ NINE INCH NAILS - BIG MAN WITH A GUN)
* anti-white - at a time when the only people who had read WHITE PRIVILEGE - THE INVISIBLE KNAPSACK were the author and her mother, PEARL JAM came out with the song WMA [WHITE MALE AMERICAN] - opening line- "He won the lottery, by being born"
* hag-flattering - back before it was a political crime to say feminist hags like Lena Dunham were anything but "HOT!", Cobain walked-the-walk and married feminist attention-whore/casting-couch skank* Courtney Love

*she has a bit part in the pretty good Sid Vicous bio-pic SID & NANCY starring the always-excellent Gary Oldman

I don’t think the point was what they stood for, the content of their lyrics, the group members’ personal politics, or even their aesthetics, though I think there are some interesting parallels. Unlike with the fascist leanings of punk, grunge fell in the PC era, and there can be no uncompromised art in such times, lest it be alternative-alternative. You wouldn’t have mainstream success, nor be the darlings of the hipsters like Nirvana.

The point is what alt-rock represented relative to mainstream rock. Conservatism, Inc. is “cock rock,” the alt-right is grunge. Simple as that.

Yeah, they never got no respect, even in their prime. But DEAD OR ALIVE and BLAZE OF GLORY were totally righteous songs.

And you know what? This illustrates a little-noted ethnological divide in rock. BON JOVI was a straight-outta-Jooyzee, goomba-Italian rock-n-roll band that was fun, gregarious, and a huge hit with the ladies because they paid attention to their hair and clothing- just as Italian men are among the world’s most stylish. Same for AEROSMITH (a New England Italian/Portuguese band). In contrast, rock groups that are of mostly dreary Northern European forest stock do not pay nearly as much attention to looks and embrace musical styles that are often harsh and lyrical themes that are decidedly unromantic- in other words, they are chick repellents and play to mostly sausage fests (THIS IS SPINAL TAP made the same observation early on). And it is an immutable law that a rock star that cannot attract good-looking women will not remain a star for long (one of grunge’s most deleterious effects- with its utilitarian, lumberjack dresscode- was to take all fashion sense out of white rock music. THE BLACK KEYS- who I’m told are a talented group- like like grown-up AV club rejects).

One of the funny things about The Clash and the Sex Pistols is how much they were recruited for their good looks. I always wondered why Joe Strummer and Paul Simonon of the Clash look quite similar. It turns out that Mick Jones had an idea of what he wanted his band to look like, and Simonon, tall and square-jawed, fit it exactly. The problem was that Simonon hadn't bothered to learn anything about music (but he was visually artistic, which was good). So he had to be taught to play the bass. Then Strummer came along, who looked like a shorter, darker version of Simonon.

Another funny story is that Mick Jones and Chrissie Hynde (eventually, leader of The Pretenders) had an agreement to form a band before Jones launched the Clash. On paper, it sounds like a good fit, but Jones just really didn't want to be in a band with a girl, especially an older one with a dominant personality like Chrissie. So he never did much to make this band happen because he really wanted to be in a guy band with some other lads, which The Clash very much turned out to be.

I knew alt-country singer-songwriter Robbie Fulks a little in Chicago.

Did you ever catch The Mekons when you lived in Chicago? In some ways, they were the first Alt-Country band. Intriguing embrace of Americana by nihilistic post-punk English art students. Fear and Whiskey is a seminal Alt-Country album.

Yeah, they never got no respect, even in their prime. But DEAD OR ALIVE and BLAZE OF GLORY were totally righteous songs.

And you know what? This illustrates a little-noted ethnological divide in rock. BON JOVI was a straight-outta-Jooyzee, goomba-Italian rock-n-roll band that was fun, gregarious, and a huge hit with the ladies because they paid attention to their hair and clothing- just as Italian men are among the world's most stylish. Same for AEROSMITH (a New England Italian/Portuguese band). In contrast, rock groups that are of mostly dreary Northern European forest stock do not pay nearly as much attention to looks and embrace musical styles that are often harsh and lyrical themes that are decidedly unromantic- in other words, they are chick repellents and play to mostly sausage fests (THIS IS SPINAL TAP made the same observation early on). And it is an immutable law that a rock star that cannot attract good-looking women will not remain a star for long (one of grunge's most deleterious effects- with its utilitarian, lumberjack dresscode- was to take all fashion sense out of white rock music. THE BLACK KEYS- who I'm told are a talented group- like like grown-up AV club rejects).

One of the funny things about The Clash and the Sex Pistols is how much they were recruited for their good looks. I always wondered why Joe Strummer and Paul Simonon of the Clash look quite similar. It turns out that Mick Jones had an idea of what he wanted his band to look like, and Simonon, tall and square-jawed, fit it exactly. The problem was that Simonon hadn’t bothered to learn anything about music (but he was visually artistic, which was good). So he had to be taught to play the bass. Then Strummer came along, who looked like a shorter, darker version of Simonon.

Another funny story is that Mick Jones and Chrissie Hynde (eventually, leader of The Pretenders) had an agreement to form a band before Jones launched the Clash. On paper, it sounds like a good fit, but Jones just really didn’t want to be in a band with a girl, especially an older one with a dominant personality like Chrissie. So he never did much to make this band happen because he really wanted to be in a guy band with some other lads, which The Clash very much turned out to be.

Sid Vicious simply could not play a note.
In fact, his guitar was unplugged from the amp whilst touring.
Steve Joined, who at that time was no great guitarist, even moaned about Vicious's uselessness.
Sid Vicious was an old mate of Johnny Rotten, and badgered Rotten to be in the band. Rotten 'eased out' Glen Matlock - a man who could actually play, and the only Pistol who could actually write tunes, to bring in the tone-deaf arrhythymic Vicious.

Was Vicious 'chosen for his looks'? - as a result of a congenital medical condition, his right eye was usually shut at any moment of 'stress' - look at any photograph of him. This combined with an ashen paleness, frightening spiky hair and a 6 ft plus frame, lent him a 'sinister' aspect - or so said Debbie Spungen.

Glen Matlock - perhaps the most congenial of all the Pistols, freely admits that 'Pretty Vacant' was based on the tune of Abba's SOS, of all things.

Apparently, Clash drummer 'Topper' Headon was named after his resemblance to a spider monkey.
The popular British kids' comic 'Topper' used to feature a strip called 'Mickey's Monkey' about a mischievous spider monkey.

I'm not old enough for Generation X (the band), but Idol was still popular when I was a kid. "Cradle of Love," and all that, so I was familiar with him. I think "Dancing with Myself" and "Ready, Steady, Go" might've started out as Gen X songs.

It wouldn't surprise me that Idol had something to do with that insulting term. He always feigned contempt for his audience, with his signature sneer and brandishing his fist. I used to think the sneer was a nod to Elvis, as punk tried to recapture the spirit of early rock. But Elvis' sneer was endearing. I remember one of his Silent Generation fans telling me men didn't like Elvis until they recognized the contempt he showed for the women swooning over him; the dog in "Hound Dog" was supposed to represent his female fans, etc. I don't know how far to trust that, but it's true that Elvis didn't sneer at the world. You could always pretend he was sneering along with you.

I blame most of that type of thing on the Boomers--or at least the popular image of the Boomers*--whose "come on, people now" attempts at hastening the eschaton to usher in the Age of Aquarius naturally caused a dystopian backlash.

*I know actual Boomers, like my father, who told me the hippies accounted for at most 1% of the student population at his college. Granted, he didn't go to Berkeley or Columbia, but he did go to the University of (the People's Republic of) Minnesota. News crews would crowd around groups of like four people protesting while the rest shook their heads and headed to class.

He was also drafted and managed not to shoot off his big toe before boot camp.

One of the funny things about The Clash and the Sex Pistols is how much they were recruited for their good looks. I always wondered why Joe Strummer and Paul Simonon of the Clash look quite similar. It turns out that Mick Jones had an idea of what he wanted his band to look like, and Simonon, tall and square-jawed, fit it exactly. The problem was that Simonon hadn't bothered to learn anything about music (but he was visually artistic, which was good). So he had to be taught to play the bass. Then Strummer came along, who looked like a shorter, darker version of Simonon.

Another funny story is that Mick Jones and Chrissie Hynde (eventually, leader of The Pretenders) had an agreement to form a band before Jones launched the Clash. On paper, it sounds like a good fit, but Jones just really didn't want to be in a band with a girl, especially an older one with a dominant personality like Chrissie. So he never did much to make this band happen because he really wanted to be in a guy band with some other lads, which The Clash very much turned out to be.

The Ramones first played in the UK on America’s Bicentennial. The future members of The Clash and The Sex Pistols did not have tickets for the show and were let in the back entrance by The Ramones.

While metal was jumping the shark with hair bands and GNR, alternative music (basically Grunge) came along and drank their milkshake. As a metaphor for the alt-right, while on the one hand I like the rebellion and the fact alternative supplanted the dominant white musical culture, on the other hand, I don't like the transience of alternative. It came, it went. It seemed like for quite a while we had bands that sounded like variations on Creed. And then I stopped listening to radio, aside from classical.

But then again, what do young white males listen to these days? I really don't know. I think metal is actually quite common. Power metal seems enduring. For example, Sabaton, a Scando metal band with a niche of singing about famous European battles. Someone used their song Carollus Rex to stick a Trump montage to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1w4IxCXIxU

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_XII_of_Sweden

Now that everyone can basically research things on their own on the internet and can find the music themselves, the marketing push is less dominant. Now it's more pull - people find what they like and get more of it.

I’d dispute that alternative was grunge. Grunge was alternative once alternative ceased to be alternative and became the commercial first choice.

Alternative was a thing in the 80′s, pre-grunge, with college radio darlings like REM. (OK, REM was kind of the Eagles of alternative.) MTV did the “120 Minutes” show starting sometime in the mid-80′s during a graveyard time slot, so it was big enough by then to get MTV to devote some airplay to it.

I think there’s near-perfect definitional overlap with 80′s college radio and alternative during that era, if only because alternative was defined in negative terms: it was what didn’t fit into existing formats. Commercial radio airplay was dominated by what was by then being called classic rock, songs from the 60′s and 70′s that had been on constant rotation for the last 15 years. Hair metal was a genre, at least if you were in a large enough city for a metal station, and regular pop was a genre, but the Husker Du or Game Theory didn’t figure there.

I’d also include post-punk, hardcore, reggae, goth, neo-mod, and dream pop under the alternative banner. Obviously there is no unifying style at all to these, aside from the fact that they weren’t getting airplay and triple digit IQ males were listening to them because they were fed up with everything else. Alternative acts would sometimes break through on the pop side (see REM, the Smiths, 10K Maniacs, etc) and for that reason the record labels and acts trying to break out paid a lot of attention to college radio.

Eventually college radio formed a sort of critical mass of a listening audience as novelty-seeking teens adopted the ethos. In the larger cities there were a few commercial stations (KROQ, 91X) that had playlists from the more popular college radio acts. Then Nirvana broke through and dragged a lot of bands with them. What had once been defined in negatively–”we’re not Starship”–started solidifying around a style and attitude and maybe fashion sense in the 90′s. What was called alternative in that era was actually the commercial mainstream.

I’d say were still in the 80′s college radio phase of the alt-right. It’s still defined in negative terms as not-something. It’s all over the map stylistically, from the white identity people to the neo-reactionary monarchists to PUAs and HBDers. (I’d dispute that HBD is inherently alt-right at all; it just gets lumped there because it’s rejected everywhere else.) One important difference is that the political equivalent of the record labels aren’t mining the college radio of the alt-right, looking for new bands. There’s no “120 Minutes” show. They’re trying to blackball all the new acts so they can devote more airtime to REO Speedwagon.

Something that's overlooked is the rise of MTV in 1983 did a lot to clear out 1970s mainstream acts in favor of newer bands. ZZ Top was kind of the exception that demonstrates the tendency because Billy Gibbons is a relative of MGM art director Cedric Gibbons and had the visual skills to cash in on the video era.

The downside of this generational change was that a lot of the older bands could actually play, while a lot of the newer bands were suddenly on TV because they could look cool banging chords on keyboards but didn't have the musical ability to have a long career.

Billy (b. 1955) was a mid-Baby Boomer, while Pete Townshend was born in 1945, that Pre-Boom generation that the stars fell upon.

Novelist Douglas Coupland published "Generation X" in 1991. He attributed the term to Idol.

I’m not old enough for Generation X (the band), but Idol was still popular when I was a kid. “Cradle of Love,” and all that, so I was familiar with him. I think “Dancing with Myself” and “Ready, Steady, Go” might’ve started out as Gen X songs.

It wouldn’t surprise me that Idol had something to do with that insulting term. He always feigned contempt for his audience, with his signature sneer and brandishing his fist. I used to think the sneer was a nod to Elvis, as punk tried to recapture the spirit of early rock. But Elvis’ sneer was endearing. I remember one of his Silent Generation fans telling me men didn’t like Elvis until they recognized the contempt he showed for the women swooning over him; the dog in “Hound Dog” was supposed to represent his female fans, etc. I don’t know how far to trust that, but it’s true that Elvis didn’t sneer at the world. You could always pretend he was sneering along with you.

I'd dispute that alternative was grunge. Grunge was alternative once alternative ceased to be alternative and became the commercial first choice.

Alternative was a thing in the 80's, pre-grunge, with college radio darlings like REM. (OK, REM was kind of the Eagles of alternative.) MTV did the "120 Minutes" show starting sometime in the mid-80's during a graveyard time slot, so it was big enough by then to get MTV to devote some airplay to it.

I think there's near-perfect definitional overlap with 80's college radio and alternative during that era, if only because alternative was defined in negative terms: it was what didn't fit into existing formats. Commercial radio airplay was dominated by what was by then being called classic rock, songs from the 60's and 70's that had been on constant rotation for the last 15 years. Hair metal was a genre, at least if you were in a large enough city for a metal station, and regular pop was a genre, but the Husker Du or Game Theory didn't figure there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyKU29v-JLg

I'd also include post-punk, hardcore, reggae, goth, neo-mod, and dream pop under the alternative banner. Obviously there is no unifying style at all to these, aside from the fact that they weren't getting airplay and triple digit IQ males were listening to them because they were fed up with everything else. Alternative acts would sometimes break through on the pop side (see REM, the Smiths, 10K Maniacs, etc) and for that reason the record labels and acts trying to break out paid a lot of attention to college radio.

Eventually college radio formed a sort of critical mass of a listening audience as novelty-seeking teens adopted the ethos. In the larger cities there were a few commercial stations (KROQ, 91X) that had playlists from the more popular college radio acts. Then Nirvana broke through and dragged a lot of bands with them. What had once been defined in negatively--"we're not Starship"--started solidifying around a style and attitude and maybe fashion sense in the 90's. What was called alternative in that era was actually the commercial mainstream.

I'd say were still in the 80's college radio phase of the alt-right. It's still defined in negative terms as not-something. It's all over the map stylistically, from the white identity people to the neo-reactionary monarchists to PUAs and HBDers. (I'd dispute that HBD is inherently alt-right at all; it just gets lumped there because it's rejected everywhere else.) One important difference is that the political equivalent of the record labels aren't mining the college radio of the alt-right, looking for new bands. There's no "120 Minutes" show. They're trying to blackball all the new acts so they can devote more airtime to REO Speedwagon.

Something that’s overlooked is the rise of MTV in 1983 did a lot to clear out 1970s mainstream acts in favor of newer bands. ZZ Top was kind of the exception that demonstrates the tendency because Billy Gibbons is a relative of MGM art director Cedric Gibbons and had the visual skills to cash in on the video era.

The downside of this generational change was that a lot of the older bands could actually play, while a lot of the newer bands were suddenly on TV because they could look cool banging chords on keyboards but didn’t have the musical ability to have a long career.

"Wasn’t that the point of calling them “gen x,” the most insulting name for a generation ever? You are an unknown quantity, of course you get overlooked."

Here was the other nomination from 1977, by Richard Hell and the Voidoids:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TP3x-VdOb44

I blame most of that type of thing on the Boomers–or at least the popular image of the Boomers*–whose “come on, people now” attempts at hastening the eschaton to usher in the Age of Aquarius naturally caused a dystopian backlash.

*I know actual Boomers, like my father, who told me the hippies accounted for at most 1% of the student population at his college. Granted, he didn’t go to Berkeley or Columbia, but he did go to the University of (the People’s Republic of) Minnesota. News crews would crowd around groups of like four people protesting while the rest shook their heads and headed to class.

He was also drafted and managed not to shoot off his big toe before boot camp.

It's true that the hippies were just a handful of the Boomers but almost all of them were just as radical but in a less obvious way. The elders of the Boomers built brand new suburbs, schools. universities and theme parks all in the hopes of a radical, Year Zero transformation of mankind in the younger generation. Vatican II was brought in, educations systems were transformed, divorce was liberalized, multiculturalism & non-White immigration were introduced, all by men far too old to be Boomers.

Men of Walt Disney and Kenneth Clark's generation seemed to be wildly enthusiastic for change or at least avuncular toward it. Check out Clarke's "Civilisation (1969) Part 13 of 13 - Heroic Materialism" on YouTube at around the 36min mark to get a feel for the spirit of the time. That's one of the Boomers' dirty little secrets: their elders were far more broadminded and supportive of change than they are now.

Something that's overlooked is the rise of MTV in 1983 did a lot to clear out 1970s mainstream acts in favor of newer bands. ZZ Top was kind of the exception that demonstrates the tendency because Billy Gibbons is a relative of MGM art director Cedric Gibbons and had the visual skills to cash in on the video era.

The downside of this generational change was that a lot of the older bands could actually play, while a lot of the newer bands were suddenly on TV because they could look cool banging chords on keyboards but didn't have the musical ability to have a long career.

Yeah, they never got no respect, even in their prime. But DEAD OR ALIVE and BLAZE OF GLORY were totally righteous songs.

And you know what? This illustrates a little-noted ethnological divide in rock. BON JOVI was a straight-outta-Jooyzee, goomba-Italian rock-n-roll band that was fun, gregarious, and a huge hit with the ladies because they paid attention to their hair and clothing- just as Italian men are among the world's most stylish. Same for AEROSMITH (a New England Italian/Portuguese band). In contrast, rock groups that are of mostly dreary Northern European forest stock do not pay nearly as much attention to looks and embrace musical styles that are often harsh and lyrical themes that are decidedly unromantic- in other words, they are chick repellents and play to mostly sausage fests (THIS IS SPINAL TAP made the same observation early on). And it is an immutable law that a rock star that cannot attract good-looking women will not remain a star for long (one of grunge's most deleterious effects- with its utilitarian, lumberjack dresscode- was to take all fashion sense out of white rock music. THE BLACK KEYS- who I'm told are a talented group- like like grown-up AV club rejects).

Those two Bon Jovi songs actually were pretty good. One of them was in a Western with Emilio Estevez.

It didn’t hurt them with the ladies that Jon Bon Jovi had Hollywood looks (and has had a pretty decent acting career as a sideline).

As far as Northern European acts, Tove Lo, the Swedish pop/dance star is easy on the eyes, and has a retro, ’70s aesthetic.

David Allan Coe would have been one of the most successful songwriters in Nashville if he hadn’t released a few “for bikers only” records that were obscene and used epithets for blacks and other groups. Although he’s had some success since then he has definitely been snubbed by many.

One of the funny things about The Clash and the Sex Pistols is how much they were recruited for their good looks. I always wondered why Joe Strummer and Paul Simonon of the Clash look quite similar. It turns out that Mick Jones had an idea of what he wanted his band to look like, and Simonon, tall and square-jawed, fit it exactly. The problem was that Simonon hadn't bothered to learn anything about music (but he was visually artistic, which was good). So he had to be taught to play the bass. Then Strummer came along, who looked like a shorter, darker version of Simonon.

Another funny story is that Mick Jones and Chrissie Hynde (eventually, leader of The Pretenders) had an agreement to form a band before Jones launched the Clash. On paper, it sounds like a good fit, but Jones just really didn't want to be in a band with a girl, especially an older one with a dominant personality like Chrissie. So he never did much to make this band happen because he really wanted to be in a guy band with some other lads, which The Clash very much turned out to be.

Sid Vicious simply could not play a note.
In fact, his guitar was unplugged from the amp whilst touring.
Steve Joined, who at that time was no great guitarist, even moaned about Vicious’s uselessness.
Sid Vicious was an old mate of Johnny Rotten, and badgered Rotten to be in the band. Rotten ‘eased out’ Glen Matlock – a man who could actually play, and the only Pistol who could actually write tunes, to bring in the tone-deaf arrhythymic Vicious.

Was Vicious ‘chosen for his looks’? – as a result of a congenital medical condition, his right eye was usually shut at any moment of ‘stress’ – look at any photograph of him. This combined with an ashen paleness, frightening spiky hair and a 6 ft plus frame, lent him a ‘sinister’ aspect – or so said Debbie Spungen.

Glen Matlock – perhaps the most congenial of all the Pistols, freely admits that ‘Pretty Vacant’ was based on the tune of Abba’s SOS, of all things.

One of the funny things about The Clash and the Sex Pistols is how much they were recruited for their good looks. I always wondered why Joe Strummer and Paul Simonon of the Clash look quite similar. It turns out that Mick Jones had an idea of what he wanted his band to look like, and Simonon, tall and square-jawed, fit it exactly. The problem was that Simonon hadn't bothered to learn anything about music (but he was visually artistic, which was good). So he had to be taught to play the bass. Then Strummer came along, who looked like a shorter, darker version of Simonon.

Another funny story is that Mick Jones and Chrissie Hynde (eventually, leader of The Pretenders) had an agreement to form a band before Jones launched the Clash. On paper, it sounds like a good fit, but Jones just really didn't want to be in a band with a girl, especially an older one with a dominant personality like Chrissie. So he never did much to make this band happen because he really wanted to be in a guy band with some other lads, which The Clash very much turned out to be.

Apparently, Clash drummer ‘Topper’ Headon was named after his resemblance to a spider monkey.
The popular British kids’ comic ‘Topper’ used to feature a strip called ‘Mickey’s Monkey’ about a mischievous spider monkey.

Sid Vicious simply could not play a note.
In fact, his guitar was unplugged from the amp whilst touring.
Steve Joined, who at that time was no great guitarist, even moaned about Vicious's uselessness.
Sid Vicious was an old mate of Johnny Rotten, and badgered Rotten to be in the band. Rotten 'eased out' Glen Matlock - a man who could actually play, and the only Pistol who could actually write tunes, to bring in the tone-deaf arrhythymic Vicious.

Was Vicious 'chosen for his looks'? - as a result of a congenital medical condition, his right eye was usually shut at any moment of 'stress' - look at any photograph of him. This combined with an ashen paleness, frightening spiky hair and a 6 ft plus frame, lent him a 'sinister' aspect - or so said Debbie Spungen.

Glen Matlock - perhaps the most congenial of all the Pistols, freely admits that 'Pretty Vacant' was based on the tune of Abba's SOS, of all things.

> Don’t ask me exactly what the difference between alt and indie is. I’m sure somebody knows, but not me.

Indie is just a newer term. “Alternative” used to mean something like Ned’s Atomic Dustbin, more upbeat but with distorted guitars — an updated New Wave. Nirvana was not “alternative,” although they could be seen in that greater movement. Then there became too many genres so the term alternative as a distinct identifier became meaningless. And then you got the term indie.

“Alternative” was like a lighter, more socially acceptable version of punk. You didn’t have to become a whole new person and abandon your family to be “alternative.” It was somewhere in the middle, just edgy enough to be cool. So in the same way, alt-right is a toned down version of more extreme hard right sentiments, which is socially acceptable enough for educated people to embrace it, which is why you are now seeing higher class, more educated and socially influential people writing on the alt-right.

Interestingly, despite the similarities of their career paths, the two bands actually achieved this while going in completely opposite musical directions. The Cure pretty much started out with, or at least quickly arrived at, the darkest sound they would ever cultivate, becoming synonymous with goth rock to the general public, while Depeche Mode started out as a gay synth-pop band—and I mean literally gay, they actually sang songs about coming on to dudes.

I respect the early evolution of Depeche Mode much more than, say, Ministry. Depeche Mode stopped being gay because they started as a supergroup of Depeche Mode and Erasure. At their peak, Depeche Mode was heavily influenced by Flood and Alan Wilder.

I am a partisan of Erasure, which is brighter and happier than Depeche Mode. But the Mode has one great album in Violator. I also like the Yazz and their Upstairs at Eric's.

Nothing beats "Chains of Love" and "A Little Respect," though that could be pure nostalgia on my part. When I grew out of my pop phase, say at 14 or so, I abjured synthesized and what I considered overproduced music, but lately I've gotten back into New Wave. The dancier side, definitely not the punk side. Duran Duran, Bronski Beat, New Order (not Joy Division), Real Life, etc. Which I used to find highly gay, but I like disco, too, so what's the difference.

I even got a little into contemporary European synth pop, thanks to the movie Drive (Kavinsky, which has an interesting concept album called Out Run, College, and Electric Youth). Which is proof positive that consumers will buy anything if you advertise enough and they have nothing better to do.

I respect the early evolution of Depeche Mode much more than, say, Ministry. Depeche Mode stopped being gay because they started as a supergroup of Depeche Mode and Erasure. At their peak, Depeche Mode was heavily influenced by Flood and Alan Wilder.

Who likes Depeche Mode anyway? I liked "Just Can't Get Enough" back in 1981 or so, but I can recall them playing the huge Rose Bowl in Pasadena in 1988 and wondering why them rather than OMD or Flock of Seagulls or whomever.

One theory I've heard is that Asian teens in the San Gabriel Valley loved Depeche Mode.

I feel Rammstein's cover of ''Stripped'' best captures all aspects and the entire spectrum of Alt Right beliefs and aesthetics in one single song and music video, including HBD, e.g. Olympics, etc.:

The video for the song incorporated footage from the Leni Riefenstahl Nazi propaganda film Olympia, which led to threats against the band. Members of the band praised Riefenstahl's filmmaking abilities and aesthetic choices in a 2011 documentary of the making of the video, particularly the imagery of the athletes, while simultaneously disassociating themselves from Riefenstahl's politics. Members of Depeche Mode, especially Dave Gahan, responded positively to the cover, since it was so different from any other versions of Depeche Mode's work.[10]

“What do you call right-libertarians, for instance? Or neoreactionaries? Or paleo-conservatives who don’t exactly fit the prevailing definition? The alt-alt-right? That’s confusing.”

Ron Paul right-Libertarians, or Alex Jones/Paul Joseph Watson & the survivalists/preppers don’t seem Alt Right to me, nor do the libertarian anti-Islamists (very close to PJW) like Gates of Vienna blog, Gert Wilders and Breitbart for that matter. UKIP is in there, as are most Trump supporters. I guess this is the “Alt Right friendly” or Alt Lite zone.

Neoreactionaries I think fit more comfortably into Alt Right, as do HBD & here in the Sailersphere. Paleocons may or may not, but I think the views of Buchanan & Gottfried certainly seem to fit in pretty comfortably. There has to be some degree of Identitarianism – who we are, and who we are not.

I respect the early evolution of Depeche Mode much more than, say, Ministry. Depeche Mode stopped being gay because they started as a supergroup of Depeche Mode and Erasure. At their peak, Depeche Mode was heavily influenced by Flood and Alan Wilder.

Richard Spencer said his new logo was based on "synthwave nostalgia."

Depeche Mode logo:

I am a partisan of Erasure, which is brighter and happier than Depeche Mode. But the Mode has one great album in Violator. I also like the Yazz and their Upstairs at Eric’s.

Nothing beats “Chains of Love” and “A Little Respect,” though that could be pure nostalgia on my part. When I grew out of my pop phase, say at 14 or so, I abjured synthesized and what I considered overproduced music, but lately I’ve gotten back into New Wave. The dancier side, definitely not the punk side. Duran Duran, Bronski Beat, New Order (not Joy Division), Real Life, etc. Which I used to find highly gay, but I like disco, too, so what’s the difference.

I even got a little into contemporary European synth pop, thanks to the movie Drive (Kavinsky, which has an interesting concept album called Out Run, College, and Electric Youth). Which is proof positive that consumers will buy anything if you advertise enough and they have nothing better to do.

I prefer darker Erasure songs, like Love to Hate You, A Long Goodbye, Chorus, and Who Needs Love Like That. I think Love to Hate You needs a rock/metal cover almost as badly as Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. :) My favorite Erasure song is the Jon Pleased Wimmen Flashback Dub of Don't Say Your Love is Killing Me. It's impersonal and minimalist, like Pimpf by Depeche Mode or Sigesang by Download.

Those who like explosive, Sex-Pistols-style punk should try Big Man With a Gun by Nine Inch Nails or Another Bloody Election by Killing Joke, the latter being quite timely.

This Dexter Holland guy, founder of The Offspring, has impressively high IQ white interests. Apart from starting one of the best selling punk rock bands of all time which has sold tens of millions of albums, he is currently a graduate student at USC at the Laboratory of Viral Oncology and Proteomics Research, where he published a computational molecular biological paper in 2013 titled "Identification of Human MicroRNA-Like Sequences Embedded within the Protein-Encoding Genes of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus."

He also owns his own brand of hot sauce (hot sauce fetishism is a typical white guy interest) called Gringo Bandito and was a co-founder of the record label Nitro Records in the 90's (when record companies actually made big money) which incubated some popular punk rock bands like AFI. Nitro Records was later acquired by Bicycle Music. He is also a licensed Airline Transport pilot and a certified flight instructor who once made a solo trip around the world. His net worth is estimated at $65 million.

During their disastrous and erstwhile farewell tour of the USA in 1978, Said Vicious whilst ‘performing’ on stage at at a gig was suddenly rushed by a female concert-goer, who climbed on stage, ran straight toward Vicious, and punched him very hard in the face, before running back into the audience and disappearing. Why she did this is not known, ( bemused journalist of the time covering the Sex Pistols phenomenon put everything from public spitting, vomiting and splashing beer down to ‘ a noted punk greeting’), by Vicious continued the gig sporting a profuse running nose bleed that spread all over his puny bare chest – you might have seen the picture.

Anyway, the celebrated late, great, British comedian Peter Cook, on hearing this news came up with the ultimate, classic quip, of which Cook should be remembered for, if nothing else.

In the early 90′s, I hosted and produced a public access TV show featuring alternative bands. I also wrote for a ‘zine featuring same. In addition to our local fare, I interviewed bands like The Sisters of Mercy, whom I considered my biggest catch at the time.

Yes, “alt-whatever” has to be a salute to alternative rock. Still great to listen to after all these years.

People learnt to play along with Boomer narcissism though. The Gen X journalists, politicians, academics and artists who did alright tend to just be humourless little photocopies of their mentors.

Of all the detrimental effects of Boomer solipsism, this one may turn out to be the most grave.

Yes, the Boomers across the West were raised to be Year Zero people: born clean of the original sin of mankind before 1945. Nothing really came before them but a Dark Age and nothing good could possible come after them except little versions of themselves. Anything that came after them, that wasn’t in harmony with them, must be a corruption of the ideal. It doesn’t belong in the current year and must be stamped out if this post-1945, multi-generational magic spell is going to work.

Boomers have come to accept the Millennials right to exist within their reality because: A) they’re stuck having to finally admit there are people around younger than them B) they are their own children. The fear now is that the Millennials will turn out to be a Basket of Deplorables and the last 50 years of social engineering will have been for nought.

Who likes Depeche Mode anyway? I liked “Just Can’t Get Enough” back in 1981 or so, but I can recall them playing the huge Rose Bowl in Pasadena in 1988 and wondering why them rather than OMD or Flock of Seagulls or whomever.

One theory I’ve heard is that Asian teens in the San Gabriel Valley loved Depeche Mode.

Uh, semi-goth INTJ perfectionists. DM did a lot for the aesthetic sensibility of dignified masculinity in songs like Sea of Sin and Dangerous. Alan Wilder is a classically trained musician who introduced people to Philip Glass motifs in songs like Behind the Wheel and Pimpf. One cannot remix Nirvana. Did Flock of Seagulls cause a riot at an album signing in 1990?

I would actually fault DM for not being experimental enough. Skinny Puppy lacked some of the raw talent of DM, and most of their dirty experimentation didn't work, but the risks really came together in songs like Uranus Cancelled and LAHuman8, which always gives me chills. The entire Last Rights album is basically Freudian psychotherapy set to music.

I blame most of that type of thing on the Boomers--or at least the popular image of the Boomers*--whose "come on, people now" attempts at hastening the eschaton to usher in the Age of Aquarius naturally caused a dystopian backlash.

*I know actual Boomers, like my father, who told me the hippies accounted for at most 1% of the student population at his college. Granted, he didn't go to Berkeley or Columbia, but he did go to the University of (the People's Republic of) Minnesota. News crews would crowd around groups of like four people protesting while the rest shook their heads and headed to class.

He was also drafted and managed not to shoot off his big toe before boot camp.

It’s true that the hippies were just a handful of the Boomers but almost all of them were just as radical but in a less obvious way. The elders of the Boomers built brand new suburbs, schools. universities and theme parks all in the hopes of a radical, Year Zero transformation of mankind in the younger generation. Vatican II was brought in, educations systems were transformed, divorce was liberalized, multiculturalism & non-White immigration were introduced, all by men far too old to be Boomers.

Men of Walt Disney and Kenneth Clark’s generation seemed to be wildly enthusiastic for change or at least avuncular toward it. Check out Clarke’s “Civilisation (1969) Part 13 of 13 – Heroic Materialism” on YouTube at around the 36min mark to get a feel for the spirit of the time. That’s one of the Boomers’ dirty little secrets: their elders were far more broadminded and supportive of change than they are now.

Yes, the Boomers across the West were raised to be Year Zero people: born clean of the original sin of mankind before 1945. Nothing really came before them but a Dark Age and nothing good could possible come after them except little versions of themselves. Anything that came after them, that wasn't in harmony with them, must be a corruption of the ideal. It doesn't belong in the current year and must be stamped out if this post-1945, multi-generational magic spell is going to work.

Boomers have come to accept the Millennials right to exist within their reality because: A) they're stuck having to finally admit there are people around younger than them B) they are their own children. The fear now is that the Millennials will turn out to be a Basket of Deplorables and the last 50 years of social engineering will have been for nought.

Yes, the Boomers across the West were raised to be Year Zero people: born clean of the original sin of mankind before 1945

I’ve long thought of our present troubles as the culmination of an allergic reaction to Hiroshima/Auschwitz.

True and -- thanks to the power of mass media -- that handful of official "lessons of history" drowned out all others. It happened in a way that would have been impossible before TV, Hollywood and Time-Life books.

Younger generations also tend to over-learn or over-correct past mistakes based on the advice of parents and teachers. People tend to pass on a cartoonish thumbnail sketch of the recent past to children, who tend to turn around and take it all literally.

Yes, the Boomers across the West were raised to be Year Zero people: born clean of the original sin of mankind before 1945

I've long thought of our present troubles as the culmination of an allergic reaction to Hiroshima/Auschwitz.

True and — thanks to the power of mass media — that handful of official “lessons of history” drowned out all others. It happened in a way that would have been impossible before TV, Hollywood and Time-Life books.

Younger generations also tend to over-learn or over-correct past mistakes based on the advice of parents and teachers. People tend to pass on a cartoonish thumbnail sketch of the recent past to children, who tend to turn around and take it all literally.

Like all generalizations, these labels are not intended to perfect. But, I agree with your point, particularly with regards to the Boomers. Sailer is technically a Boomer, but I doubt he can relate to the people who were getting stoned during the summer of love. He was too young. Throwing him in the same bucket as a broken down old woman like Hillary Clinton does not make much sense.

Yes, the generational distinctions can be very fuzzy. My sister was born in 1964, so where does that put her? My oldest sister was born in 1957 so I suppose she is definitely a boomer. Then I came along in 1968, not a boomer certainly! But we’re all just 11 years apart (2 brothers in there too) in total. How can kids born only 11 years apart be from different generations and get different labels?

A few years back – according to the UK tabloids – John Lydon happened to inadvertantly share an airline cabin (first class, of course), with one Jay Kay, the lead singer of the British ‘indie’ band ‘Jamiroquai’.

Throughout the long trans Atlantic flight, Lydon was afflicted by an unfortunate bout of persistent flatulence, which, silently, he kept releasing during those long, long hours. Jay Kay was not amused to say the least.

‘It was really foul’, said Jay Kay, ‘every 5 minutes it was a case of “oh, that wasn’t me”, or “that food smells a bit off, doesn’t it?”. ‘it really was relentless’.

Jay Kay felt forced to ask for a voluntary downgrade to cabin class for the remainder of the flight.

Who likes Depeche Mode anyway? I liked "Just Can't Get Enough" back in 1981 or so, but I can recall them playing the huge Rose Bowl in Pasadena in 1988 and wondering why them rather than OMD or Flock of Seagulls or whomever.

One theory I've heard is that Asian teens in the San Gabriel Valley loved Depeche Mode.

I am a partisan of Erasure, which is brighter and happier than Depeche Mode. But the Mode has one great album in Violator. I also like the Yazz and their Upstairs at Eric's.

Nothing beats "Chains of Love" and "A Little Respect," though that could be pure nostalgia on my part. When I grew out of my pop phase, say at 14 or so, I abjured synthesized and what I considered overproduced music, but lately I've gotten back into New Wave. The dancier side, definitely not the punk side. Duran Duran, Bronski Beat, New Order (not Joy Division), Real Life, etc. Which I used to find highly gay, but I like disco, too, so what's the difference.

I even got a little into contemporary European synth pop, thanks to the movie Drive (Kavinsky, which has an interesting concept album called Out Run, College, and Electric Youth). Which is proof positive that consumers will buy anything if you advertise enough and they have nothing better to do.

I prefer darker Erasure songs, like Love to Hate You, A Long Goodbye, Chorus, and Who Needs Love Like That. I think Love to Hate You needs a rock/metal cover almost as badly as Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. My favorite Erasure song is the Jon Pleased Wimmen Flashback Dub of Don’t Say Your Love is Killing Me. It’s impersonal and minimalist, like Pimpf by Depeche Mode or Sigesang by Download.

Those who like explosive, Sex-Pistols-style punk should try Big Man With a Gun by Nine Inch Nails or Another Bloody Election by Killing Joke, the latter being quite timely.

That generational thing continues to annoy me. I fit in that window. My parents were definitely Boomers, which I guess makes me technically a Gen Xer, tail-end Gen-X at best. But growing up I remember them calling us Generation Y. Then Generation Y disappeared, and they started in with the Millennial crap.

I graduated in 2000, so I was barely an adult before the new millennium. I also barely remember not having the internet or cell phones. Does that make me a Millennial? But I also remember Nirvana happening. That doesn't fit. Who cares?

You see how arbitrary are the distinctions. People seem to forget babies are born constantly

I heard a 36 year old woman describe herself as a millennial the other day, so I’m confused as to what age range it includes. Ivanka Trump describes herself as a millennial. I also hear 18 year olds described as millennials. That is too big an age range for one generation.

By the way, having Boomer parents doesn’t make you automatically Generation X. My parents are Boomers and I’m too young to have ever been included in Gen X.

But you are right- what happened to Generation Y? I think it was supposed to include 1979 to 1994.

You're right, Boomer parents could possibly have non-Gen-x kids. But in that case I'd expect either the parents to have been born at the tail end of the boom, or for them to have had the children at least 10 or so years later than the average age at which Boomer mothers had their first child. My parents were born in '47 and '51, and the former was 33 when I was born. Which is a little old, but not that old. So I should by right be a Gen-Xer, though I don't feel like it.

Problem is, two generations in a row had unifying experiences. The Great Depression, WWII, the Baby Boom, these were real phenomena. Generations to follow didn't have that. It was just baby after baby, which is productive of blurred lines.

You can't go by "where were you when Kurt Cobain's brains flew out of his head," because then you get people a few years apart pretending they're from different generations. My own cousin, who's five years older, once told me we were from different generations. I explained to her that our mothers were sisters. We we're first cousins. Of course we're part of the same generation.

They made fun of this Mr. Show with Bob and David once. Bob was talking about an unbridgeable gap of three years, and I paraphrase. "I like Star Wars, you like the Empire Strikes Back. I'm into Bananarama, you like that Bangles shit."

It's true that the hippies were just a handful of the Boomers but almost all of them were just as radical but in a less obvious way. The elders of the Boomers built brand new suburbs, schools. universities and theme parks all in the hopes of a radical, Year Zero transformation of mankind in the younger generation. Vatican II was brought in, educations systems were transformed, divorce was liberalized, multiculturalism & non-White immigration were introduced, all by men far too old to be Boomers.

Men of Walt Disney and Kenneth Clark's generation seemed to be wildly enthusiastic for change or at least avuncular toward it. Check out Clarke's "Civilisation (1969) Part 13 of 13 - Heroic Materialism" on YouTube at around the 36min mark to get a feel for the spirit of the time. That's one of the Boomers' dirty little secrets: their elders were far more broadminded and supportive of change than they are now.

Also, a lot of the “counterculture” stuff was popular before the 60s.

My grandmother told me that weed was available at high school parties in the 1940s.

I found it funny how Nirvanna, the epitome of the angst-ridden, alternative, culture-jamming grunge band, got just as hardly used by cynical record companies just as much as any band from the 60s. Thier rebellion was commoditized, monetized, and merchandized.

I never liked them anyway. Music is music, and I prefer musicians who see themselves as musicians – as professionals practicing a craft – rather than rebels or social activists.

Brian Ferry, the World’s Coolest Man back in the 70s. He got all the best tail in those days, and he’s a conservative, unlike lefty Eno.

When I was younger, I used to think that "Kiss and Tell" was an intentional homage to glamour, pragmatism and the pursuit of wealth, values revived in the 1980s in Ronald Reagan's America. Maybe it was.

The Offspring members include some high IQ guys. The singer is a molecular biology grad student, IIRC, and I think there was a guy in the band with masters in finance.

My favorite alt-rock band for years was The Cult. I first heard their Sonic Temple album on a buddy's smuggled Walkman in Fort Benning in 1989, and over the years I saw them in concert several times, mostly in NYC, but I also saw them once in Brazil. Funny you mentioned Bon Jovi, because in that concert, the lead singer, Ian Astbury, mentioned him contemptuously.

This year, at a concert in Canada, Black Lives Matter came up, apparently, and Ian Astbury said "all lives matter". Then he got crap for it, and apologized and said black lives matter. I tweeted the band a link to one of your posts and they blocked me.
https://twitter.com/dpinsen/status/752297478523846656

I saw them on their Love 25th anniversary tour, where they played that whole album live. What they should have done, IMO, was record every show, and pick the best version of each one and release it as a live Love album.

I feel Rammstein’s cover of ”Stripped” best captures all aspects and the entire spectrum of Alt Right beliefs and aesthetics in one single song and music video, including HBD, e.g. Olympics, etc.:

The video for the song incorporated footage from the Leni Riefenstahl Nazi propaganda film Olympia, which led to threats against the band. Members of the band praised Riefenstahl’s filmmaking abilities and aesthetic choices in a 2011 documentary of the making of the video, particularly the imagery of the athletes, while simultaneously disassociating themselves from Riefenstahl’s politics. Members of Depeche Mode, especially Dave Gahan, responded positively to the cover, since it was so different from any other versions of Depeche Mode’s work.[10]

I had not seen that video. It is good. I never liked the cover that much partly because the lyrics change made Rammstein seem like they didn't really appreciate the song's appeal, like they thought it was just about sex, not personal connection. I think songs like Sonne and Moskau show Rammstein at their best. They aren't just a Laibach rip off or typical heavy metal.

My favourite definition of that is “any music descended from Sweetheart of the Rodeo”…

Really you mean "late Byrds." Sweetheart of the Rodeo had the best name and cover art, but its two best songs (Pretty Boy Floyd and Blue Canadian Rockies) were inferior to those on the albums before and after.

Really you mean “late Byrds.” Sweetheart of the Rodeo had the best name and cover art, but its two best songs (Pretty Boy Floyd and Blue Canadian Rockies) were inferior to those on the albums before and after.

There was an alt-rock station earlier this century based in Long Island. Where I live in Northeastern NJ was at the Western edge of their broadcast range. They were giving away Paul Westerberg tickets once and I guess I was the only one who called in. The DJ picked up and I won them. Got to see him play solo at some place halfway out on Long Island that hosted more MMA fights than concerts I think.

They were giving away Paul Westerberg tickets once and I guess I was the only one who called in … Got to see him play solo at some place halfway out on Long Island that hosted more MMA fights than concerts I think.

I saw Morrissey in a banquet hall in Maryland under similar circumstances during a slump in his career (touring for Southpaw Grammar, if memory serves).

He walked onstage, looked around, and said to the crowd: “Welcome to my Bar Mitzvah,” before delivering a totally righteous performance.

Who likes Depeche Mode anyway? I liked "Just Can't Get Enough" back in 1981 or so, but I can recall them playing the huge Rose Bowl in Pasadena in 1988 and wondering why them rather than OMD or Flock of Seagulls or whomever.

One theory I've heard is that Asian teens in the San Gabriel Valley loved Depeche Mode.

Who likes Depeche Mode anyway?

Uh, semi-goth INTJ perfectionists. DM did a lot for the aesthetic sensibility of dignified masculinity in songs like Sea of Sin and Dangerous. Alan Wilder is a classically trained musician who introduced people to Philip Glass motifs in songs like Behind the Wheel and Pimpf. One cannot remix Nirvana. Did Flock of Seagulls cause a riot at an album signing in 1990?

I would actually fault DM for not being experimental enough. Skinny Puppy lacked some of the raw talent of DM, and most of their dirty experimentation didn’t work, but the risks really came together in songs like Uranus Cancelled and LAHuman8, which always gives me chills. The entire Last Rights album is basically Freudian psychotherapy set to music.

I remember that, however vaguely. It's one of the very few news stories I can recall from my childhood prior to the breakup of Soviet Russia. The Twins winning the Series in '87, the Berlin Wall coming down, and the release of Violator in L.A. Isn't memory weird?

Who likes Depeche Mode anyway? I liked "Just Can't Get Enough" back in 1981 or so, but I can recall them playing the huge Rose Bowl in Pasadena in 1988 and wondering why them rather than OMD or Flock of Seagulls or whomever.

One theory I've heard is that Asian teens in the San Gabriel Valley loved Depeche Mode.

Like a lot of those fey British bands (e.g., the aforementioned Cure), all the members were actually straight, right? (And never claimed to be otherwise, or so I thought.)

Finding the non-white in the Tool audience is like finding Waldo. Something about non-danceable music and obscure time signatures, along with music complex enough to require multiple listens to properly enjoy is a very white guy thing. Maynard OTOH has compared Trump to Hitler.

If Trump is going to be anyone from Germany in the 1930s it's Hindenburg. It's possible a WN might follow Trump, not an anti-Semite though. But Trump can really only provoke some demographic stasis and better thought out domestic and foreign policy.

Other than who power is handed to, I see Trump more as a Bismarck.

I’d say Tool’s (seen twice) crowd is pretty much the same as Rush’s (seen 5 times) crowd: pretty intelligent and 95% white males, but that could just be their fans in Boston. Lot of air drumming at both shows, as Neil Peart and Danny Carey are among the best.

Steve, you had a previous comment on tall rockers. Carey is a linebacker-like 6’5″and Peart is 6’4″.

Those would be your 30 and 40-something white males of today. The timing is right, at the very least.

I guess the term includes everything that played on MTV’s 120 Minutes: The Smiths, Psychedelic Furs, Mudhoney, Nirvana, Alice in Chains, etc. The most defining feature of the music was you had to seek it out and it was as good or better in many cases than what played on the regular Top 40 Stations. Even now on Cable’s Music Choice “Adult Alternative” channel there is a lot of excellent new music of the “College Rock” variety including everything from the Avett Brothers to Houndmouth that is not so easy to find, but a lot of it enjoyable and evincing great talent. Almost all white, incidentally, although some interesting black artists too.

I heard a 36 year old woman describe herself as a millennial the other day, so I'm confused as to what age range it includes. Ivanka Trump describes herself as a millennial. I also hear 18 year olds described as millennials. That is too big an age range for one generation.

By the way, having Boomer parents doesn't make you automatically Generation X. My parents are Boomers and I'm too young to have ever been included in Gen X.

But you are right- what happened to Generation Y? I think it was supposed to include 1979 to 1994.

Then about 5-6 years ago, I never heard the word again.

You’re right, Boomer parents could possibly have non-Gen-x kids. But in that case I’d expect either the parents to have been born at the tail end of the boom, or for them to have had the children at least 10 or so years later than the average age at which Boomer mothers had their first child. My parents were born in ’47 and ’51, and the former was 33 when I was born. Which is a little old, but not that old. So I should by right be a Gen-Xer, though I don’t feel like it.

Problem is, two generations in a row had unifying experiences. The Great Depression, WWII, the Baby Boom, these were real phenomena. Generations to follow didn’t have that. It was just baby after baby, which is productive of blurred lines.

You can’t go by “where were you when Kurt Cobain’s brains flew out of his head,” because then you get people a few years apart pretending they’re from different generations. My own cousin, who’s five years older, once told me we were from different generations. I explained to her that our mothers were sisters. We we’re first cousins. Of course we’re part of the same generation.

They made fun of this Mr. Show with Bob and David once. Bob was talking about an unbridgeable gap of three years, and I paraphrase. “I like Star Wars, you like the Empire Strikes Back. I’m into Bananarama, you like that Bangles shit.”

Uh, semi-goth INTJ perfectionists. DM did a lot for the aesthetic sensibility of dignified masculinity in songs like Sea of Sin and Dangerous. Alan Wilder is a classically trained musician who introduced people to Philip Glass motifs in songs like Behind the Wheel and Pimpf. One cannot remix Nirvana. Did Flock of Seagulls cause a riot at an album signing in 1990?

I would actually fault DM for not being experimental enough. Skinny Puppy lacked some of the raw talent of DM, and most of their dirty experimentation didn't work, but the risks really came together in songs like Uranus Cancelled and LAHuman8, which always gives me chills. The entire Last Rights album is basically Freudian psychotherapy set to music.

“Did Flock of Seagulls cause a riot at an album signing in 1990?”

I remember that, however vaguely. It’s one of the very few news stories I can recall from my childhood prior to the breakup of Soviet Russia. The Twins winning the Series in ’87, the Berlin Wall coming down, and the release of Violator in L.A. Isn’t memory weird?

These were all created in the Great Renaming of 1986–1987, before which all of these newsgroups were in the net.* hierarchy. At that time there was a great controversy over what newsgroups should be allowed. Among those that the Usenet cabal (who effectively ran the Big 7 at the time) did not allow were those concerning recipes, recreational drug use, and sex.

This situation resulted in the creation of an alt.* (short for "alternative") Usenet hierarchy, under which these groups would be allowed. Over time, the laxness of rules on newsgroup creation in alt.* compared to the Big 7 meant that many new topics could, given time, gain enough popularity to get a Big 7 newsgroup. There was a rapid growth of alt.* as a result, and the trend continues to this day. Because of the anarchistic nature with which the groups sprang up, some jokingly referred to ALT standing for "Anarchists, Lunatics and Terrorists" (a backronym).

I dunno, ER, “alternative” in music predated its application in usenet, and exceeded it in visibility. Influential zines like “Alternative Ulster” (1977) and “Alternative Press” (1985) and the MTV alternative show (1986) brought the term to a wide audience before the alt hierarchy even existed. Usenet was confined to a small geeky fringe until well into the 90s.

I think Steve’s right, alt-right shares DNA with alt-rock. The alt-right is an R&D lab for social thought the same as alt-rock was an R&D lab for musical ideas that later reached broader acceptance. Alt-right blogs and websites mirror the networked structure and oppositional, DIY spirit of alt-rock zines and labels.

Meanwhile, the most successful live band of the 80′s-90′s was neither mainstream nor alternative, yet was very steeped in the DIY ethic of the original punks: The Grateful Dead. Back then there was a lot of sneering on the part of punk/alt fans towards those old hippies and their fans, but Jerry Garcia and Elvis Costello were pals and occasional collaborators, meeting in a kind of alt-country space.

Recently the ultra-hipster Brooklyn band The National put together a 5-CD set called The Day of the Dead where all kinds of alt/indie artists, plus a few from the jazz world, recorded a whole slew of Dead songs. Some of the members then recorded an album of country songs with Bob Weir, originals that Weir wrote with some younger collaborators and will soon be playing a few dates with them.

The band was never overtly political compared to their peers, Jerry rightly did not want to go there, but the inherent leftism is out in the open now. Weir ranted at the end of a performance at Bonnaroo this summer about some GOP politicians who made some kind of non-PC statements, called them assholes and compared them to the Taliban. And just the other day I saw Phil Lesh perform and he changed a line in Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues to some kind of putdown of the Republican Party. Not that I think the GOP is that great but that was a putz move.

I feel Rammstein's cover of ''Stripped'' best captures all aspects and the entire spectrum of Alt Right beliefs and aesthetics in one single song and music video, including HBD, e.g. Olympics, etc.:

The video for the song incorporated footage from the Leni Riefenstahl Nazi propaganda film Olympia, which led to threats against the band. Members of the band praised Riefenstahl's filmmaking abilities and aesthetic choices in a 2011 documentary of the making of the video, particularly the imagery of the athletes, while simultaneously disassociating themselves from Riefenstahl's politics. Members of Depeche Mode, especially Dave Gahan, responded positively to the cover, since it was so different from any other versions of Depeche Mode's work.[10]

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stripped_(song)#Rammstein_cover

Rammstein Stripped [official video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3TpAZ96hE0

I had not seen that video. It is good. I never liked the cover that much partly because the lyrics change made Rammstein seem like they didn’t really appreciate the song’s appeal, like they thought it was just about sex, not personal connection. I think songs like Sonne and Moskau show Rammstein at their best. They aren’t just a Laibach rip off or typical heavy metal.

This music was called “grunge” at this time. Grunge was defined as heavy metal played by people with no musical talent. Later, it was understood that grunge musicians like to experiment with different tuning which is why they always seemed to be out of tune. They also moaned about their petty problems. There were never these great songs about sexual conquests, the fun of drugs or devil worship. Hell, if someone burned down the casino, a grunge band would have never set up a recording studio at the grand hotel. They would have just moped about it.

Really you mean “late Byrds.” Sweetheart of the Rodeo had the best name and cover art, but its two best songs (Pretty Boy Floyd and Blue Canadian Rockies) were inferior to those on the albums before and after.

Really you mean “late Byrds.” Sweetheart of the Rodeo had the best name and cover art, but its two best songs (Pretty Boy Floyd and Blue Canadian Rockies) were inferior to those on the albums before and after.

The alt-right is the space of the political right consisting of people and groups whose rightist politics are chiefly motivated by some form of anti-egalitarianism, and at the same time are not comfortable with associating with the incumbent categories of modern rightist politics.

My proposed definition of alt-lite:

The alt-lite is a ergoregional space surrounding the alt-right, which consists of people and groups whose rightist politics have some noticeable and obvious anti-egalitarian propensities but are not chiefly motivated by anti-egalitarianism, and whose relationships with the incumbent categories of modern rightist politics are generally strained and murky but could range to amicable to hostile, and may be but are not necessarily sympathetic to the alt-right.

Anti-egalitarianism (i.e., the obviously true thesis of the Bell Curve) seems to be the crux of the movement.

I'd say that the alt-right, or more generally alt-* term should be indeed be based on the globalism vs. localism (maybe better: nationalism) axis.

Why? Because it is so basic, and it is precisely the sort of political organization to be found not just in the US, but in Europe. In the end, the political divisions upon which people actually organize themselves have to be decisive: no political philosophy is going to get any traction without voters/citizens lining up behind it.

And of course "nationalism" appeals to a very natural and basic human impulse to identify with, support, and be supported by, a group. And certainly it has taken many forms that seem not just benign, but generous -- such as the nationalism of Eisenhower and Stevenson.

Globalism as it has been implemented has taken an extraordinary toll on the middle and lower classes in the US, and, I'd expect, elsewhere. It is also the natural, self-serving philosophy of the elites. Because of how it pits the interests of different economic classes within a nation against each other, also, it represents a deep political organizing principle.

But any number of other kinds of philosophies/policies are, at least at first blush, consistent with being on the nationalistic, alt-* side, ranging, for example, from libertarian to socialistic. It makes sense then to talk about some of those philosophies/policies as constituting the alt-right, others alt-center, and still others alt-left.

The only justification for anti-globalism is anti-egalitarianism. That is the “red pill” from which all other premises and conclusions follow.

Who likes Depeche Mode anyway? I liked "Just Can't Get Enough" back in 1981 or so, but I can recall them playing the huge Rose Bowl in Pasadena in 1988 and wondering why them rather than OMD or Flock of Seagulls or whomever.

One theory I've heard is that Asian teens in the San Gabriel Valley loved Depeche Mode.

I saw them on their Love 25th anniversary tour, where they played that whole album live. What they should have done, IMO, was record every show, and pick the best version of each one and release it as a live Love album.

Reading these two hundred odd comments almost entirely focused on the music, it crosses my mind that it is not so much that the rise of the alt-right is a parallel to the rise of punk and alt-rock, as Steve posits, but that the alt-right is alt-rock fandom’s venture into political philosophy.

It'd be great if that were more the case but no doubt the vast majority of people that like alternative rock and punk and grew up with that music are liberals and progressives, and will remain that way. Not sure how original their contributions have been to political philosophy however. Gen Xers have basically lived under the shadow of the damn 60s. Maybe now we'll break away as the older, early Boomers fad away and the crappier world they left us becomes too obvious to deny.

I'd say Tool's (seen twice) crowd is pretty much the same as Rush's (seen 5 times) crowd: pretty intelligent and 95% white males, but that could just be their fans in Boston. Lot of air drumming at both shows, as Neil Peart and Danny Carey are among the best.

Steve, you had a previous comment on tall rockers. Carey is a linebacker-like 6'5"and Peart is 6'4".

The linebackers on the Giants’ current roster range from 6’1 to 6’4″, defensive linemen from 6’2 to 6’6″.

To quote the grumpy German phyiscs professor, this is so bad it is not even wrong. There might be some valid parallels between 70's punk and today's alt-right- mainly in that both opposed a smug, upper-middle class, Rosseau-inspired liberalism (in the punk's case, peace-n-love, "gentle people" hippies; in the alt-right's case, "not who we are", micro-aggression huntin' SJW's), but in the case of late-80's/early-90's alternative music- particularly "grunge"- NOT ON YOUR FREAKIN' LIFE!

Kurt Cobain is not some spiritual godfather for today's Richard Spencers. He is the direct antecedent for every one of today's wimpy, male-feminist, BLM/LGBTQWRTY-"allied" manboobs. If there was any politico-cultural core to grunge, it was a seething hatred of every fibre in the being of America's red-blooded, manly, patriotic, straight dudes. Alt-rock in its NIRVANA-led strain used the trappings of what it derisively called "cock rock" to ultimately subvert and destroy the traditional American male ethos rock once embodied.

Some highlights-

* NIRVANA pioneered the male feminist anti-date rape protest song which every other 90's alternative act would go on to copy, whether they were credible talents in their own right (PEARL JAM) or a cynically-created poseur group like BUSH (to quote the former Mr. Gwen Stefani- "there's no sex in your violence")
* NIRVANA practiced the art of gender-pandering- they played several benefits for Bosnian rape victims, even as many more Yugoslav men and BOYS were being butchered over the course of the same war; a very "world ends, women and minorities hit hardest" sort of moment
* obnoxiously pro-homosexual and gender-bending- Cobain offered that he was sad he hadn't been born gay; copy-cat poseur Scott Weiland of STONE TEMPLE PILOTS wore a dress in the video of his group's anti-date rape song SEX TYPE THING
* anti-gun, and of course happy to link firearm culture to male sexual inadaquecy in fine cult-marx fashion (PEARL JAM - GLORIFIED G/ NINE INCH NAILS - BIG MAN WITH A GUN)
* anti-white - at a time when the only people who had read WHITE PRIVILEGE - THE INVISIBLE KNAPSACK were the author and her mother, PEARL JAM came out with the song WMA [WHITE MALE AMERICAN] - opening line- "He won the lottery, by being born"
* hag-flattering - back before it was a political crime to say feminist hags like Lena Dunham were anything but "HOT!", Cobain walked-the-walk and married feminist attention-whore/casting-couch skank* Courtney Love

*she has a bit part in the pretty good Sid Vicous bio-pic SID & NANCY starring the always-excellent Gary Oldman

A year after Nevermind hit #1, Nirvana released Incesticide, a collection of material the band recorded prior to 1991. The initial pressings included these liner notes written by Cobain, signed “Kurdt (the blonde one.)”

Regarding the jobs thing, my mom casually mentioned one time a friend of hers who dropped out of college his freshman year because he wasn't studying hard and went to work for a major aerospace engineering corporation. She mentioned this like it wasn't even a big deal. I mean come on, the job market's not too bad now if you have extensive education and work experience but it will never be 'fail out of state university and just get a corporate middle class job' good again. Jesus the early boomers had it good.

I wish I had not read your post. I’m at a “job” now too. *triggered* as the p-generation says. I need to avoid the “old economy steve” meme type stuff and any talk about what the god awful early Boomers had. I suppose I could snap one day.

Absolutely. Alt was the soul of usenet. Who can forget alt.swedish.chef.bork.bork.bork. or
alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.

and alt.seduction.fast. I ignored alt.seduction.fast because the idea that something I read on the internet could get me into the pants of women was too incredible for me to accept. You had to play sports and be a star at minimum, or TALL. It must have been a fraud.

But, I gather in alt.seduction.fast "players" posted their experiences on dates trying to get into women's pants (just as in comp. science.unix.solaris people posted their experiences trying to get sendmail to complile on solaris) out of simple good will to their fellow man and these tentitive reports blossemed.

Someone posted "I flattered her to death and she said she had to work tomorrow and went home." Another person posted I treated her bad and she hung on my shoulder. And game was born. Empirically. It was all field reports. I did x she did y. Eventually some people started to notice patterns. Early game texts were alt.seduction.fast reports digested into a different form. Scientific method applied to getting laid.

Reading these two hundred odd comments almost entirely focused on the music, it crosses my mind that it is not so much that the rise of the alt-right is a parallel to the rise of punk and alt-rock, as Steve posits, but that the alt-right is alt-rock fandom's venture into political philosophy.

It’d be great if that were more the case but no doubt the vast majority of people that like alternative rock and punk and grew up with that music are liberals and progressives, and will remain that way. Not sure how original their contributions have been to political philosophy however. Gen Xers have basically lived under the shadow of the damn 60s. Maybe now we’ll break away as the older, early Boomers fad away and the crappier world they left us becomes too obvious to deny.

It’d be great if that were more the case but no doubt the vast majority of people that like alternative rock and punk and grew up with that music are liberals and progressives, and will remain that way.

You might be surprised how many of your fellow travelers are just that (liberal and/or progressive). The global monoculture being imposed by the Davoisie is neither.

It'd be great if that were more the case but no doubt the vast majority of people that like alternative rock and punk and grew up with that music are liberals and progressives, and will remain that way. Not sure how original their contributions have been to political philosophy however. Gen Xers have basically lived under the shadow of the damn 60s. Maybe now we'll break away as the older, early Boomers fad away and the crappier world they left us becomes too obvious to deny.

It’d be great if that were more the case but no doubt the vast majority of people that like alternative rock and punk and grew up with that music are liberals and progressives, and will remain that way.

You might be surprised how many of your fellow travelers are just that (liberal and/or progressive). The global monoculture being imposed by the Davoisie is neither.

It’d be great if that were more the case but no doubt the vast majority of people that like alternative rock and punk and grew up with that music are liberals and progressives, and will remain that way.

You might be surprised how many of your fellow travelers are just that (liberal and/or progressive). The global monoculture being imposed by the Davoisie is neither.

I try to think for myself. Don't want to just join the mob. I just thought an end, or at least strong reduction, to mass immigration would help improve my life and the lives of my fellow Americans. I want a nation we can call our own with a government that protects us. I was a good progressive not long ago and still am on some things. Things aren't going well.
Now, now I feel a quasi-religious connection to cartoon "Nazi" frogs on the Internet and I'm looking into the writings of Savitri Devi Mukherji. I don't know.

I try to think for myself. Don’t want to just join the mob. I just thought an end, or at least strong reduction, to mass immigration would help improve my life and the lives of my fellow Americans. I want a nation we can call our own with a government that protects us. I was a good progressive not long ago and still am on some things. Things aren’t going well.
Now, now I feel a quasi-religious connection to cartoon “Nazi” frogs on the Internet and I’m looking into the writings of Savitri Devi Mukherji. I don’t know.

In the UK and Europe there is actually an alt right alt music scene. Most alt right groups are folky and acoustic or industrial electronic. The biggest influence on the alt right music scene would be Joy Division. There are dozens of obscure, alt-rightish groups influenced by Ian Curtis and co.

Personally I can’t stand most of them due to their preference for low, flat vocals and their lack of interest in melody or virtuosity. However, there are some pretty good Italian alt right bands that produce music in a range of styles from tight punk to symphonic folk and rock.

I always thought two key early “Americana” records were American Beauty and Workingman’s Dead. I might even add, ironically, Exile on Mainstreet.

Or The Band’s output, for that matter, written by the Canadian Robbie Robertson, which is almost entirely fixated on Americana.

I think the truth is that that generation of ’60s musicians were acutely aware of the Old, Weird America (in Greil Marcus’s phrase) that Steve recently referred to. Many of them actually grew up in it, at least in early childhood. Bob Dylan located and visited a dying Woodie Guthrie, but, seen another way, the entire folk music scene that he entered in Greenwich Village in the early ’60s was an attempt to capture and preserve Americana. It wasn’t just the Byrds who paid homage—almost every American band from the later ’60s and early ’70s cut at least a couple of tracks that could be classified as such.

I totally agree about the Band. I always categorized them as a kind of Canadian CCR. But obviously great in their own right. As I was reading your post I was thinking of Rick Danko, whom Elvis Costello once called his favorite singer. If I recall correctly, he said his second favorite was Richard Emmanuel. A very interesting record in this vein and underrated in his catalog is King of America, a mid-80s EC album sans Attractions but boasting Elvis P sidemen James Burton (who also played with Gram Parsons--Oooh, Las Vegas) and Jerry Scheff. But basically, if I read you correctly, The Basement Tapes may be the Rosetta Stone of most of the popular American music (rock, country, folk, mainly) of the last half century.

Brian Ferry, the World's Coolest Man back in the 70s. He got all the best tail in those days, and he's a conservative, unlike lefty Eno.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZjuaU0jOyo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SR83e4EJ_To

Brian Ferry, the World’s Coolest Man back in the 70s. He got all the best tail in those days, and he’s a conservative, unlike lefty Eno.

When I was younger, I used to think that “Kiss and Tell” was an intentional homage to glamour, pragmatism and the pursuit of wealth, values revived in the 1980s in Ronald Reagan’s America. Maybe it was.

Bryan Ferry's dad had a famously horrible working class job, something like being in charge of mucking out the pit ponies used in those coal mines that, apparently, hadn't heard about the steam engine yet, or something.

Ferry went to art school and studied under a famous artist who said that the avid Ferry turned out to be his greatest creation.

You're right, Boomer parents could possibly have non-Gen-x kids. But in that case I'd expect either the parents to have been born at the tail end of the boom, or for them to have had the children at least 10 or so years later than the average age at which Boomer mothers had their first child. My parents were born in '47 and '51, and the former was 33 when I was born. Which is a little old, but not that old. So I should by right be a Gen-Xer, though I don't feel like it.

Problem is, two generations in a row had unifying experiences. The Great Depression, WWII, the Baby Boom, these were real phenomena. Generations to follow didn't have that. It was just baby after baby, which is productive of blurred lines.

You can't go by "where were you when Kurt Cobain's brains flew out of his head," because then you get people a few years apart pretending they're from different generations. My own cousin, who's five years older, once told me we were from different generations. I explained to her that our mothers were sisters. We we're first cousins. Of course we're part of the same generation.

They made fun of this Mr. Show with Bob and David once. Bob was talking about an unbridgeable gap of three years, and I paraphrase. "I like Star Wars, you like the Empire Strikes Back. I'm into Bananarama, you like that Bangles shit."

I assume you're joking, but no. A lot of people didn't have cable when it came out, or it wasn't carried in their area. Others weren't attached to the tv umbilical. Still more weren't allowed to watch as kids. My parents forbade it. We watched anyway, but it was a hassle.

Brian Ferry, the World’s Coolest Man back in the 70s. He got all the best tail in those days, and he’s a conservative, unlike lefty Eno.

When I was younger, I used to think that "Kiss and Tell" was an intentional homage to glamour, pragmatism and the pursuit of wealth, values revived in the 1980s in Ronald Reagan's America. Maybe it was.

https://youtu.be/dA2rI6HGb6E

“Old money’s better than new”

Bryan Ferry’s dad had a famously horrible working class job, something like being in charge of mucking out the pit ponies used in those coal mines that, apparently, hadn’t heard about the steam engine yet, or something.

Ferry went to art school and studied under a famous artist who said that the avid Ferry turned out to be his greatest creation.

Brian Ferry married the daughter of a Duke, marquis - that sort of thing, you know high up in the English land owning aristocracy, going back to Norman times.
Ferry's son, being well into the landed gentry life fulfilled his main ambition in life and became a 'master of the fox hounds' , at least before the Blair hunting ban.
Yep. An endless source of Nigel Dempster tittle tattle.

I always thought two key early “Americana” records were American Beauty and Workingman’s Dead. I might even add, ironically, Exile on Mainstreet.

Or The Band's output, for that matter, written by the Canadian Robbie Robertson, which is almost entirely fixated on Americana.

I think the truth is that that generation of '60s musicians were acutely aware of the Old, Weird America (in Greil Marcus's phrase) that Steve recently referred to. Many of them actually grew up in it, at least in early childhood. Bob Dylan located and visited a dying Woodie Guthrie, but, seen another way, the entire folk music scene that he entered in Greenwich Village in the early '60s was an attempt to capture and preserve Americana. It wasn't just the Byrds who paid homage—almost every American band from the later '60s and early '70s cut at least a couple of tracks that could be classified as such.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x30rkbn

I totally agree about the Band. I always categorized them as a kind of Canadian CCR. But obviously great in their own right. As I was reading your post I was thinking of Rick Danko, whom Elvis Costello once called his favorite singer. If I recall correctly, he said his second favorite was Richard Emmanuel. A very interesting record in this vein and underrated in his catalog is King of America, a mid-80s EC album sans Attractions but boasting Elvis P sidemen James Burton (who also played with Gram Parsons–Oooh, Las Vegas) and Jerry Scheff. But basically, if I read you correctly, The Basement Tapes may be the Rosetta Stone of most of the popular American music (rock, country, folk, mainly) of the last half century.

That's probably true. Personally, though, I detach Soundgarden from the other two, I think because they fit better with my taste for classic hard rock and heavy metal. I'm not sure if that's true or I'm being arbitrary, because they can be as sour, fuzzy, and punkish as the rest (see: Ty Cobb). But I like them a lot, lot better.

Could be I just prefer Chris Cornell's voice. Kurt can't sing, and Eddie Vedder was once the most annoying person on the planet to me.

Alice in Chains is basically metal in the musical sense. They were touring with Metallica. But because they came out of Seattle the same time, they were called grunge, which is musically not a very meaningful term.

When I was a kid I thought Alice in Chains was a bit depressing. Whoever wrote "Down in a Hole" and "Man in the Box" couldn't have been very happy. I was also confused by their disparate sounds. I'm not sure I knew the heavier songs and the acoustic songs were by the same band.

But I like them now. They were a much needed kick in the crotch for metal music. A better "cock rock" antidote than Nirvana.

"I suppose we all like the music we hear from about the age 14 to 20 the best. Does that sound about right?"

Rock music, maybe. I like the pop music from earlier, maybe 5 to 12. That's who it's made for, I presume. Some of that includes hard rock. My earliest memories of pop culture are from 1987, when I was 5. Madonna's Like a Prayer and G'n'R's Paradise City stand out most to me. Make of that what you will.

I didn't like contemporary rock when I was a teenager. I wasn't into Green Day, Nine Inch Nails, Weezer, Live, Tool, or what have you. I jumped back to classic and early rock. But your theory holds up, so far as rock is concerned, because that's still my favorite of the genre.

But no, I don't like the music I liked from 14 to 20 the best. I discover new music all the time, and some of it fits my personality better now. Folk, country, jazz, and new age, for instance, are allowed to be more mature. But above all, I didn't get into classical music until I was an adult. And that is far, far more important to me now than any kind of popular music.

Yes, classical is more important than the (mostly metal) music I liked while being a teenager.

But I still like most of the bands I liked back then. Interestingly, I don’t like everything, and the relative order of things is different, I like some bands more and some less than I did back then.

And I liked Nirvana back then (also Soundgarden and Alice in Chains), but I can’t stand it now much. Though occasionally I give it a try, it’s just not that good.

Bryan Ferry's dad had a famously horrible working class job, something like being in charge of mucking out the pit ponies used in those coal mines that, apparently, hadn't heard about the steam engine yet, or something.

Ferry went to art school and studied under a famous artist who said that the avid Ferry turned out to be his greatest creation.

Brian Ferry married the daughter of a Duke, marquis – that sort of thing, you know high up in the English land owning aristocracy, going back to Norman times.
Ferry’s son, being well into the landed gentry life fulfilled his main ambition in life and became a ‘master of the fox hounds’ , at least before the Blair hunting ban.
Yep. An endless source of Nigel Dempster tittle tattle.

You’d have to classify heavy metal as mainstream rock at that point. Even the heavier stuff. Metallica’s Black Album came out the sane year as Nevermind, and I am willing to bet outsold it.

Hmmm, Metallica was certainly mainstream at that point, and that album featured four gigantic hits, but I think it is largely just them crossing over. Notwithstanding the Macarena, flamenco music wasn't mainstream either in the 90's.

I mean you did not see Slayer collaborating the the SF Symphony Orchestra.

https://youtu.be/YpoHBTeyFxg?t=35s

I agree, heavier metal wasn’t really mainstream. Metallica had to water down its music before becoming mainstream. (I’m not saying they were doing it only or mainly to achieve commercial success, but had they stayed thrash metal, they’d never become really mainstream.)

The whole alt rock thing is confusing to some because of the whole in-group/out-group signaling that youth trends became more nebulous. Before the late 80′s, the punk/new wave thing was almost annoyingly about drawing the line in the sand. The Germs biopic, for example, is a literal celebration from beginning to end of status marking and ingroup boundary setting.
The alt-rock thing, however, got the antiscene trend going, to the point of burying itself in its asexual flannel shirt.

You are not very bright. This does not in any way mitigate the veracity of what I said. A lot of people who vote for the Democratic party tend to be poor blacks and Latinos. So they have an even lower income than Trump voters. It does not change in any way the veracity of my statement. Here is what I said:

"The typical Trump voter is a blue-collar white heterosexual male without a college education."

This is true. Nowhere do I compare Trump voters to Hillary voters. I simply described the typical Trump voter, which tends to be a poorly educated white person of limited means.

Comparing them to Democratic voters and then pretending that you have a point by pointing out that Hillary voters tend to be even poorer is irrelevant because rich and upper middle-class people, the haut-bourgeoise, tend to be indifferent to politics and don't vote. They don't vote for any candidate, so Trump voters being on average wealthier than the competition means little.

FYI, rich and educated people, in the rare instances they bother to show up to vote, is usually for tiny parties that represent values that are far from mainstream. They usually vote for the Green Party, or the Libertarian candidate or such.

You are not very bright. This does not in any way mitigate the veracity of what I said. A lot of people who vote for the Democratic party tend to be poor blacks and Latinos. So they have an even lower income than Trump voters. It does not change in any way the veracity of my statement. Here is what I said:

“The typical Trump voter is a blue-collar white heterosexual male without a college education.”

This is true. Nowhere do I compare Trump voters to Hillary voters. I simply described the typical Trump voter, which tends to be a poorly educated white person of limited means.

Comparing them to Democratic voters and then pretending that you have a point by pointing out that Hillary voters tend to be even poorer is irrelevant because rich and upper middle-class people, the haut-bourgeoise, tend to be indifferent to politics and don’t vote. They don’t vote for any candidate, so Trump voters being on average wealthier than the competition means little.

FYI, rich and educated people, in the rare instances they bother to show up to vote, is usually for tiny parties that represent values that are far from mainstream. They usually vote for the Green Party, or the Libertarian candidate or such.

You mistakenly believe I set out to prove anything. What I wrote only proves that Trump voters have more money, which many believe correlates to higher IQs.

FYI, I live among the upper middle class, and they're relentlessly political, especially concerning local issues, and vote religiously. But as the great philosopher Axl Rose wrote you've worked too hard for your illusions just to throw them all away.

An aside, brevity is the soul of wit. It's hard to decide if you or Corvie is the King of TL;DR here. Like Barliman Butterburr, many words and few to the point.

I assume you’re joking, but no. A lot of people didn’t have cable when it came out, or it wasn’t carried in their area. Others weren’t attached to the tv umbilical. Still more weren’t allowed to watch as kids. My parents forbade it. We watched anyway, but it was a hassle.

Alice in Chains is basically metal in the musical sense. They were touring with Metallica. But because they came out of Seattle the same time, they were called grunge, which is musically not a very meaningful term.

When I was a kid I thought Alice in Chains was a bit depressing. Whoever wrote “Down in a Hole” and “Man in the Box” couldn’t have been very happy. I was also confused by their disparate sounds. I’m not sure I knew the heavier songs and the acoustic songs were by the same band.

But I like them now. They were a much needed kick in the crotch for metal music. A better “cock rock” antidote than Nirvana.

You are not very bright. This does not in any way mitigate the veracity of what I said. A lot of people who vote for the Democratic party tend to be poor blacks and Latinos. So they have an even lower income than Trump voters. It does not change in any way the veracity of my statement. Here is what I said:

"The typical Trump voter is a blue-collar white heterosexual male without a college education."

This is true. Nowhere do I compare Trump voters to Hillary voters. I simply described the typical Trump voter, which tends to be a poorly educated white person of limited means.

Comparing them to Democratic voters and then pretending that you have a point by pointing out that Hillary voters tend to be even poorer is irrelevant because rich and upper middle-class people, the haut-bourgeoise, tend to be indifferent to politics and don't vote. They don't vote for any candidate, so Trump voters being on average wealthier than the competition means little.

FYI, rich and educated people, in the rare instances they bother to show up to vote, is usually for tiny parties that represent values that are far from mainstream. They usually vote for the Green Party, or the Libertarian candidate or such.

My statement stands as correct. You have disproven nothing.

You mistakenly believe I set out to prove anything. What I wrote only proves that Trump voters have more money, which many believe correlates to higher IQs.

FYI, I live among the upper middle class, and they’re relentlessly political, especially concerning local issues, and vote religiously. But as the great philosopher Axl Rose wrote you’ve worked too hard for your illusions just to throw them all away.

An aside, brevity is the soul of wit. It’s hard to decide if you or Corvie is the King of TL;DR here. Like Barliman Butterburr, many words and few to the point.

[…] said the same thing I did about the alt-right, in almost the same exact words — and then, in another new piece for unz.com, he expounded, almost literally, on all the very secret thoughts I&…. There’s a serious and real conection here, and like hearing the voice of Burroughs come out […]

[…] said the same thing I did about the alt-right, in almost the same exact words — and then, in another new piece for unz.com, he expounded, almost literally, on all the very secret thoughts I&…. There’s a serious and real connection here, and like hearing the voice of Burroughs come out […]

Contact Steve Sailer

Email me at SteveSlr *at* aol*dot*com (make the obvious substitutions between the asterisks; you don’t have to capitalize an email address, I just included the capitals to make clear the logic — it’s my name without a space and without the vowels in “Sailer” that give so many people, especially irate commenters, trouble.)

iSteve Panhandling

Steve Sailer

I always appreciate my readers’ help, especially monetary. Here’s how you can help:

First: You can use PayPal (non-tax deductible) by going to the page on my old blog here. PayPal accepts most credit cards. Contributions can be either one-time only, monthly, or annual.

Second: You can mail a non-tax deductible donation to:

Steve Sailer
P.O Box 4142
Valley Village, CA 91617-0142

Third: You can make a tax deductible contribution via VDARE by clicking here. (Paypal and credit cards accepted, including recurring “subscription” donations.) Note: the VDARE site goes up and down on its own schedule, so if this link stops working, please let me know.

The IRS has issued instructions regarding Bitcoins. I’m having Coinbase immediately turn all Bitcoins I receive into U.S. dollars and deposit them in my bank account. At the end of the year, Coinbase will presumably send me a 1099 form for filing my taxes.

Payments are not tax deductible.

Below are links to two Coinbase pages of mine. This first is if you want to enter a U.S. dollar-denominated amount to pay me.

Fifth: if you have a Wells Fargo bank account, you can transfer money to me (with no fees) via Wells Fargo SurePay. Just tell WF SurePay to send the money to my ancient AOL email address steveslrAT aol.com — replace the AT with the usual @). (Non-tax deductible.) There is no 2.9% fee like with PayPal or Google Wallet, so this is good for large contributions.

Sixth: if you have a Chase bank account (or even other bank accounts), you can transfer money to me (with no fees) via Chase QuickPay (FAQ). Just tell Chase QuickPay to send the money to my ancient AOL email address (steveslrATaol.com — replace the AT with the usual @). If Chase asks for the name on my account, it’s StevenSailer with an n at the end of Steven. (Non-tax deductible.) There is no 2.9% fee like with PayPal or Google Wallet, so this is good for large contributions.

Here’s the Google Wallet FAQ. From it: “You will need to have (or sign up for) Google Wallet to send or receive money. If you have ever purchased anything on Google Play, then you most likely already have a Google Wallet. If you do not yet have a Google Wallet, don’t worry, the process is simple: go to wallet.google.com and follow the steps.” You probably already have a Google ID and password, which Google Wallet uses, so signing up Wallet is pretty painless.

You can put money into your Google Wallet Balance from your bank account and send it with no service fee.

Google Wallet works from both a website and a smartphoneapp (Android and iPhone — the Google Wallet app is currently available only in the U.S., but the Google Wallet website can be used in 160 countries).

Or, once you sign up with Google Wallet, you can simply send money via credit card, bank transfer, or Wallet Balance as an attachment from Google’s free Gmail email service. Here’s how to do it.

>>Why can’t the domestic apparatus of the American Jewish Committee reconstitute itself at the request of Jewish donors and members, and the Anti-Defamation League assert itself, like the Southern Poverty Law Center,<<
Oh, the SPLCC, that's a great institution to emulate.

There was no “polemical style” in MacDonald’s books.
But no books about Whites, regardless of “polemical style”, are ever disregarded as racist trash.
It is a polemical style and any History of the Italians, History of the English, History of the Swedes that was written in such po...

Truth:
The proffered explanation for the Stanford law school dean's bar exam failure was a whole load of malarkey.
A much better explanation was given some time ago by Dr Bernard Meltzer, a dispenser of good advice on a local radio station (WOR). To wit: the top five lawyers in NYC would fail t...

MacDonald ignores a long history of radical and critical gentile thought from the ancient Greek philosophers to Rousseau to the Social Gospel Movement to French existentialism to Bill Ayers to Peggy McIntosh and countless other examples.
1. It's a book about the organized Jewish community, not ...

"I’m of the belief that HBD and selective immigration are probably bigger factors in explaining the decline of the white American tech worker than something like the H-1B."
It's always funny when you look at all the people desperate to come to the place that invented the industry and is the ...

Are there books like MacDonald’s written about any particular group in the same polemical style that aren’t immediately disregarded as racist trash?
There was no "polemical style" in MacDonald's books.
But no books about Whites, regardless of "polemical style", are ever disregarded as ra...

They also filter the comment section hard.
Meanwhile, Reverse Colonialism OT:
'I didn’t fight against French Algeria to accept an Algerian France': Bardot slams modern-day France
Speaking to the French weekly Valeurs Actuelles, Bardot said that France is not what it once was. "I have b...

When the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known....
I wonder what he could mean be this. Aren't Trump's failings a matter of record now?
Trump_electrocutes_Skywalker_at_a_distance.jpg

We were seeking to fill several different positions. The most important involved statistical programming, where an ability to use both Microsoft SQL and SAS was critical. We were so desperate for technically competent people in our salary range that I had received permission to hire peop